Digitization PEN: Expanding and enhancing a TCN digitizing fossils to reconstruct evolving ecosystems the Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway

俄克拉荷马大学萨姆·诺布尔博物馆(SNM)将加入由其他十个机构组成的主题收藏网络(TCN)，这些机构拥有大量来自浅海岩石的化石，被称为西部内陆海道，在晚白垩世时期(6500万至1亿年前)将北美一分为二。晚白垩世是一个比今天更温暖的“温室”气候和更高的海平面时期，环境可能与在某些人为温室气体排放情景下对下个世纪中叶的预测相似。通过该TCN提供的数据提供了一个回答各种问题的机会，这些问题涉及气候和海平面变化对海洋生物群落的影响，并可能为预测现代海洋生物多样性的未来结果提供关键信息。该项目将数字化从SNM收集的数据，并通过各种门户网站向科学界、工业界、K-16教育工作者和学生以及公众提供这些数据。该项目的其他社会影响是通过与SNM的教育部合作实现的，该部门将开发一个以实地和实验室为基础的教师讲习班和网络资源，并编制侧重于生物和环境随时间变化，包括海平面变化、大陆漂移和其他地质现象的课程。该项目还有助于对大学生进行现代数字化技术培训，并从博物馆藏品中生成生物多样性数据，每年最多有5名学生参与。SNM的无脊椎动物古生物收藏将对来自海道南北两端450个地点的约13,000个标本的数据进行数字化，从而扩大该项目的古地理和古环境范围。特别重要的是阿拉斯加和加拿大西北部海道最北部边缘的地点，这些地点将该项目的地理覆盖范围扩大了至少4,000公里。它们将使物种的地理范围得到充分评估，并将提供对古群落组成的纬度变异性的洞察。SNM？S收藏的标本还包括来自俄克拉荷马州南部240个地区的约7,500件标本。他们记录了位于德克萨斯州海岸的沿海地区的古群落，这些地区将由该项目的其他合作伙伴贡献。这些数据“填充”了靠近海道南缘的浅海环境梯度的较近端，从而将该项目的范围扩大到陆上环境。数据将由TCN汇总，并与iDigBio(www.idigBio.org)共享。

The Sam Noble Museum (SNM) of the University of Oklahoma will join a Thematic Collections Network (TCN) of ten other institutions with extensive holdings of fossils from rocks that formed in a shallow sea, termed the Western Interior Seaway, which bisected North America during the late Cretaceous Period (65-100 million years ago). The late Cretaceous was a time of warmer, "greenhouse" climates and higher sea levels than those of today, and environments may have been similar to those predicted for the middle of the next century under some scenarios of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The data made available through this TCN offer an opportunity to answer a variety of questions dealing with the impact of climatic and sea level change on marine communities, and may provide critical information for predicting future outcomes for modern marine biodiversity. This project will digitize collection data from the SNM and make them accessible to the scientific community, industry, K-16 educators and students, and the public via a variety of web portals. Additional societal impacts of the project are made through a collaboration with the Education Department at the SNM, which will develop a field- and lab-based teacher workshop and web resources, and produce curricula that focus on biotic and environmental change over time, including sea level change, continental drift and other geological phenomena. The project also contributes to training of university students in modern digitization techniques and the generation of biodiversity data from museum collections, with up to five students participating annually.The Invertebrate Paleontology Collection at the SNM will digitize data for about 13,000 specimens from 450 localities at the northern and southern ends of the seaway, and thereby expand both the paleogeographic and paleoenvironmental reach of the project. Of particular importance are localities from the far northern margin of the seaway in Alaska and northwestern Canada that extend geographic coverage of the project by at least 4,000 km. They will allow the geographic ranges of species to be assessed fully, and will also provide insight into latitudinal variability in paleocommunity composition. The SNM?s holdings also include about 7,500 specimens from 240 localities in southern Oklahoma. They record paleocommunities in coastal regions of the seaway that lie shoreward of localities in Texas that will be contributed by other partners in the project. These data "fill in" the more proximal end of a shallow marine environmental gradient near the southern margin of the seaway, thereby expanding the scope of the project into onshore environments. Data will be aggregated by the TCN and shared with iDigBio (www.idigbio.org).