Digitization TCN: Collaborative: Documenting Fossil Marine Invertebrate Communities of the Eastern Pacific - Faunal Responses to Environmental Change over the last 66 million years

化石为我们提供了过去生物多样性的唯一直接证据，以及生态系统中的单个生物如何对过去和长期的环境变化做出反应。该项目填补了记录过去环境变化的一个重大空白，提供了东太平洋海洋无脊椎动物群落的特别丰富的化石记录的数字化数据，新生代是自恐龙灭绝以来已经过去的6600万年。这些数据的数字化和整合将促进提高可获得性，有效分析以了解过去的变化，确定参与变化的因素，并能够预测当前的生物多样性可能如何受到未来变化的影响。虚拟野外工作经验的开发将帮助利益相关者和教育工作者了解如何使用现场数据和化石集合来推断过去的生态系统和环境状况。目前，这些数据是分布在多个自然历史集合中的大量化石标本和印刷材料的集合：该项目涉及7个初级机构、一个小集合和一个联邦机构，并将通过门户网站iDigPaleo将这些数字化标本数据与其他两个正在进行的化石网络整合在一起，通过跨越5亿多年的时间扩大化石无脊椎动物信息的来源。这些丰富的数据不仅将为研究人员提供资源，还将向K-16教育工作者、政府、行业和普通公众提供资源。通过国家资源(IDigBio)，这些数据将与关于现代生物的信息结合在一起，为理解有关生态位、环境变化、海平面变化等重要问题提供手段。此外，本科生和研究生将接受自然历史收藏的现代使用方面的培训。该奖项是通过推进生物收藏数字化计划作为国家生物收藏数字化资源的一部分颁发的，由该奖项产生的所有数据将通过国家资源(iDigBio.org)获得。

Fossils provide our only direct evidence of past biodiversity and how individual organisms to ecosystems have responded to past and long-term environmental change. This project fills a major gap in the documentation of past environmental change, making available digitized data from the especially rich fossil record of the eastern Pacific marine invertebrate communities of the Cenozoic, the 66 million years that have passed since the extinction of the dinosaurs. Digitization and integration of these data will foster increased accessibility, efficient analysis to understand past change, the identification of factors involved in that change, and enable predictions for how current biodiversity may be impacted by future change. Development of virtual fieldwork experiences will assist stakeholders and educators in understanding how field data and fossil collections are used to infer past ecosystem and environmental conditions.The data currently exist as a vast collection of fossil specimens and printed materials distributed among multiple natural history collections: this project involves 7 primary institutions, one small collection and one federal institution and will integrate this digitized specimen data with the other two ongoing fossil networks through the web portal iDigPaleo, expanding the resource for fossil invertebrate information by spanning over 500 million years. This wealth of data will provide resources not only to researchers, but will be made available to K-16 educators, government, industry, and the general public. Through the national resource (iDigBio) these data will be integrated with information on modern organisms providing the means to understand important questions on niches, environmental change, transitions in sea levels, etc. Additionally, undergraduate and graduate students will be trained in the modern uses of natural history collections. This award is made as part of the National Resource for Digitization of Biological Collections through the Advancing Digitization of Biological Collections program and all data resulting from this award will be available through the national resource (iDigBio.org).