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，以及生态系统中的个体生物如何对过去和长期的环境变化做出反应。该项目填补了以往环境变化记录方面的一个重大空白，提供了东太平洋新生代海洋无脊椎动物群落特别丰富的化石记录的数字化数据，这是恐龙灭绝以来的6 600万年。这些数据的数字化和整合将有助于提高可访问性，进行有效分析以了解过去的变化，确定变化所涉及的因素，并预测未来变化对当前生物多样性的影响。虚拟实地考察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实地数据和化石收集来推断过去的生态系统和环境条件。目前的数据是大量的化石标本和印刷材料，分布在多个自然历史收藏中：该项目涉及7个基层机构，一个小型收藏馆和一个联邦机构，并将通过门户网站iDigPaleo将这一数字化标本数据与其他两个正在进行的化石网络整合，将无脊椎动物化石信息的来源扩大到5亿年以上。这些丰富的数据不仅将为研究人员提供资源，而且将提供给K-16教育工作者，政府，行业和公众。通过国家资源（iDigBio），这些数据将与现代生物的信息相结合，提供了解生态位，环境变化，海平面变化等重要问题的手段。该奖项是作为国家资源的一部分，通过推进生物收藏品数字化计划的生物收藏品的数字化，从这个奖项产生的所有数据将通过国家资源（iDigBio.org）提供。

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).