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Documenting Fossil Marine Invertebrate Communities of the Eastern Pacific - Faunal Responses to Environmental Change over the last 66 million years: Difference between revisions
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Documenting Fossil Marine Invertebrate Communities of the Eastern Pacific - Faunal Responses to Environmental Change over the last 66 million years (view source)
Revision as of 13:02, 28 August 2018
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=== Other project documentation === | === Other project documentation === | ||
== PENs == | |||
=== Digitization PEN: Enhancing the EPICC TCN with unique, well curated, but poorly accessible collections at the University of California - Riverside === | |||
This is a Partner to Existing Networks (PEN) award to the University of California-Riverside Earth Science Museum (UCRESM) to partner with the Eastern Pacific Invertebrate Communities of the Cenozoic (EPICC) Thematic Collections Network (TCN). The EPICC TCN is digitizing collections that document the response of coastal invertebrate communities to long-term environmental changes across a wide and continuous range of latitudes since the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs. This PEN will digitize about 40,000 marine invertebrate specimens and will contribute data on fossils from boreholes drilled by private industry, bulk specimens from Pleistocene marine terraces, specimens representing the northern extent of the Bay of California, and type specimens of fossils from across Southern California. Throughout the course of the project, undergraduate students will be heavily involved. They will be given training and experience in museum studies earlier in their academic careers than is typical, giving them a boost for future career development opportunities. Many of the students that will be involved are from groups underrepresented in museum sciences. Since the majority of UCR's student body are low-income and/or from underrepresented minorities, paid internships will be provided through this project to provide an avenue for some who would otherwise be unable to enter the field. The UCRESM includes an exhibit hallway visited by about 25,000 people per year, including many of the university's tour groups. Funds from this project will be used to create an interdisciplinary exhibit on the biological, geographical, tectonic, and environmental changes of California's coastline. Specimens digitized will be included and students will play an important part in designing and putting together the exhibit. | |||
Small, out-of-the-way collections such as this are often understudied and inaccessible. This project will provide high-quality data and images to researchers unable to view specimens in person. The boreholes represented specimens from far below the surface that are difficult and expensive to obtain, so those provided by oil companies fill many gaps in the fossil record. Bulk specimens from Pleistocene marine terraces provides a less biased look at the diversity of a site than targeted collections. Specimens from the Bay of California, which once extended far north of the Salton Sea and its fauna had an unexpected affinity with the Caribbean, are important for studying the dispersal of taxa between the Atlantic and Pacific just before the closure of the Panamanian Isthmus. Best practice protocols for digitizing core data created during this project will be uploaded to EPICC's website for other core collections to consult. The data from the project, including high-quality images for 470 type specimens, will be made available online through iDigBio (idigbio.org) and the UCRESM website. | |||
''Project Sponsor'': University of California-Riverside [https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1802493 (NSF Award 1802493)] | |||
''Principal Investigators: [mailto:jess.miller-camp@ucr.edu Jess Miller-Camp] (PI), Nigel Hughes (Co-PI) | |||