Digitization PEN: Collaborative Research: The Cretaceous World: Connecting the Cretaceous Seas of North America

洛杉矶县自然历史博物馆（NHMLA）的无脊椎古生物收藏馆获得了一个奖项，以支持他们对白垩纪世界数字化主题收藏网络（CW-TCN）的贡献，该网络由美国国家科学基金会推进生物多样性数字化计划资助。该项目的主要目标是“连接白垩纪海洋”合作伙伴到现有网络（CSC-PEN），是对来自西部内陆海道（北美中部）、加利福尼亚和东北太平洋（俄勒冈-阿拉斯加）的海洋无脊椎动物和脊椎动物化石进行数字化。这些努力将使数以千计的新标本记录在网上数字化。总的来说，这些数据将通过填补现有数据集的空白，扩大其地理和分类覆盖范围，并使感兴趣的公众和研究团体更容易看到这些难以访问的集合，从而补充CW-TCN。这一信息将有助于当前的研究，旨在更好地了解地球历史上的一段时间，在这段时间里，气候变暖，海洋洪水在北美盛行。该项目的成果将通过博物馆活动、K-12课堂规划、与当地业余古生物学家的持续合作以及由NHMLA代表CW-TCN协调的虚拟野外体验向公众传播。从该奖项中获得的好处包括将来自西部内陆海道和东北太平洋代表性不足地区的32,000多个海洋无脊椎动物标本数字化，以及来自西部内陆海道和加利福尼亚州的另外2700个海洋脊椎动物化石数字化。值得注意的是，来自东北太平洋的标本的增加将在最近数字化的NHMLA加利福尼亚晚白垩纪藏品与北美中部的CW-TCN现有重点之间建立一座桥梁。这样的扩展将补充当前的CW-TCN数据集，允许在不同的古海洋环境中进行古生态位建模分析的比较，并使在地球历史的关键时期对多样性变化、生态系统结构和环境变化进行生物地理比较。数字化还将涉及2000多个标本的选择性成像和750多个地点的地理参考。值得注意的是，该项目将以数字方式动员以前从未向聚集者提供过的化石数据，并通过额外的工作人员培训，扩大NHMLA共享收集数据的能力。该项目的数字化数据将与iDigBio （idigbio.org）共享，并可通过该资源访问。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

An award is made to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County's (NHMLA) Invertebrate Paleontology collections to support their contribution to the Cretaceous World Digitization Thematic Collections Network (CW-TCN) funded by NSF's Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Program. The primary goal of this project, "Connecting the Cretaceous Seas" Partner to Existing Network (CSC-PEN), is to digitize fossil marine invertebrates and vertebrates from the Western Interior Seaway (central North America), California, and the northeastern Pacific (Oregon-Alaska). These efforts will make thousands of new specimen records digitally available online. Collectively, these data will compliment the CW-TCN by filling gaps in the existing dataset, broadening its geographic and taxonomic coverage, and making these otherwise difficult to access collections significantly more visible to the interested public and research community. This information will facilitate current research aiming to better understand an interval of Earth's history during which warmer climates and marine flooding prevailed across North America. Results of this project will be communicated to the public through museum events, K-12 classroom programming, ongoing partnerships with local avocational paleontologists, and Virtual Field Experiences being coordinated by NHMLA on behalf of the CW-TCN.Benefits to be derived from this award include digitization of more than 32,000 marine invertebrate specimens from underrepresented areas of the Western Interior Seaway and Northeastern Pacific, and an additional 2,700 marine vertebrate fossils from the Western Interior Seaway and California. Notably, the addition of specimens from the Northeastern Pacific will create a bridge between recently digitized NHMLA collections from the Late Cretaceous of California with the existing focus of the CW-TCN in central North America. Such an expansion will complement current CW-TCN datasets, permitting the comparison of paleoecological niche modeling analyses in various paleoceanographic settings and enabling biogeographic comparisons of diversity change, ecosystem structure, and environmental change during a critical interval of Earth's history. Digitization will also involve the selective imaging of more than 2,000 specimens and georeferencing of over 750 localities. Notably, this project will digitally mobilize fossil data that have never before been available to aggregators, and, in doing so, will expand the NHMLA's capacity to share collections data through additional staff training. Digitized data from this project will be shared with iDigBio (idigbio.org) and made accessible via this resource.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.