The Cretaceous World
Digitization TCN: The Cretaceous World: Digitizing Fossils to Reconstruct Evolving Ecosystems in the Western Interior Seaway
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Project Summary
Between 65 and 100 million years ago, during the time that dinosaurs walked the earth, a large, tropical seaway covered the central part of what is now North America. This seaway teemed with marine life. Snails and clams lived on the seafloor; ammonites, along with giant mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, sharks, and fish, swam about; at the same time early birds and pterosaurs floated on or flew above the seaway. What remains today is a prolific fossil record that has been collected by paleontologists for over 100 years. Notable fossils from this time period and region are on display at museums around the world. However, the vast bulk of fossils collected from this region are locked away in museum drawers. To provide scientists and the general public access to these fossils and their associated data, this project proposes to digitize invertebrate and vertebrate fossils from this time period and region, making information accessible through searchable electronic databases. Additionally, a variety of online resources illustrating and describing these fossils and mapping their distributions will be developed. A freely accessible online textbook of paleontology will be generated and a website and App will be developed to highlight the appearances, occurrences, and ages of constituent species, to help students and aspiring paleontologists identify and learn about these fossils. The project plans to generate a variety of curricular materials for K-12 education, including 3-D scans of fossils for free download and printed 3-D models for classroom use. Products of this project will also include workshops to engage science teachers and items to augment public programs and exhibits at participating institutions.
This work will greatly increase the scientific value of eight major U.S. museum collections of fossils. The museum collections contain large amounts of data useful for studying what causes marine species to migrate, go extinct, and evolve during a long period of greenhouse climate conditions similar to those our planet may soon experience. These data have relevance for evaluating how global change has and will continue to affect life on earth. An estimated 164,000 specimens collected from thousands of locations, in the region once occupied by the Western Interior Seaway, will be databased and georeferenced. Representatives from each of roughly 1,500 microfossil, invertebrate, and vertebrate species will be imaged. The digitized records will be made available online via individual museum databases, iDigBio, and iDigPaleo. The resultant data will enable scientists to answer questions about how different species interact and ecosystems change in the face of environmental shifts during a key time in the history of life. Moreover, the data will be ideal for use with an assortment of modern quantitative tools -including paleoecological niche modeling (PaleoENM) - and will help improve paleoclimate and paleoceanographic models. Finally, several undergraduate and graduate students will be trained. Results of the project will be published at the following url: www.digitalatlasofancientlife.org.
Current Research
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Project Leadership
Project sponsor: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (NSF award 1502735)
Principal Investigator (PI): Andrew Miller – Illinois Natural History Survey
Biological Informatician: Phil Anders – Illinois Natural History Survey
Project Manager: Elizabeth Lippoldt – Illinois Natural History Survey
Digitizer: Alex Kuhn – Illinois Natural History Survey
Project Consultant: Scott Bates – Purdue University North Central
Project Collaborators
Map of Collaborating Institutions
Barbara Kennedy, Richard Pyle – Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum
Julia Kerrigan – Clemson University
Cathie Hodge, Scott LaGreca – Cornell University (NSF award 1502748)
Melissa Islam, Vera Evenson – Denver Botanic Garden
Tatyana Livshultz – Drexel University, Academy of Natural Sciences
Thorsten Lumbsch – Field Museum of Natural History
Don Pfister – Harvard University, Farlow Herbarium (NSF award 1502767)
Deborah Lewis – Iowa State University
Jennie Kluse – Louisiana State University & Agricultural and Mechanical College
Michael Vincent – Miami University
Alan Fryday – Michigan State University
Roy Halling – New York Botanical Garden (NSF award 1502699)
Marc Cubeta – North Carolina State University (NSF award 1503564)
Joey Spatafora – Oregon State University
Cathie Aime – Purdue University (NSF award 1502887)
Brian Geils – USDA Forest Service, Rocky Rocky Mountain Research Station
Jim White, Ning Zhang – Rutgers University, Chrysler Herbarium (NSF award 1502788)
Dennis Desjardin – San Francisco State University
Alex Weir – State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry
Lisa Castelbury – U.S. National Fungus Collections
Martha Powell – University of Alabama
Betsy Arnold – University of Arizona
Steve Stephenson – University of Arkansas
Brent Mishler, Andrew Doran – University of California - Berkeley 1502663
Matthew Smith – University of Florida, Florida Museum of Natural History 1502763
Marin Brewer – University of Georgia, Georgia Museum of Natural History
Robert Lichtwardt – University of Kansas
Tim James, Matthew Foltz – University of Michigan 1502703
George Weiblen – University of Minnesota 1502745
Robert Kaul – University of Nebraska
Carol Ann McCormick – University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
John Hayden – University of Richmond
Karen Hughes – University of Tennessee - Knoxville
Mary Ann Feist, Sharon West – University of Wisconsin 1502915
Larry Schmidt – University of Wyoming
Mary Barkworth – Utah State University
Dean Glawe – Washington State University
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