Rait Posted April 12, 2015 Share Posted April 12, 2015 I often consult fossilworks (www.fossilworks.org) when looking for information about the age or locality of a particular prehistoric creature. I have been noting it for quite a while now, that fossilworks includes a lot of localities for a fossil which are found nowhere else on the internet (at least not with a general google search). Recent examples of this controversy include Ouranosaurus and Hypsilophodon. In both cases fossilworks lists a number of localities for both fossils while wikipedia, about.com and prehistoric-wildlife list only Niger for Ouranosaurus and England for Hypsilophodon. Should I trust fossilworks or the other sites? Any advice would be appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paleoworld-101 Posted April 12, 2015 Share Posted April 12, 2015 (edited) The site is good and certainly quite reliable in terms of accuracy, and is the result of a split that occurred when the original Palaeobiology database started by John Alroy became separate sites for whatever reason. They should provide references for any taxa occurences at a specific locality so if you have doubts you can follow up on it and see for yourself. Fossilworks gets it's info from the, i guess, 'original' Palaeobiology Database which is this website here: https://paleobiodb.org/#/ If you want the most up to date informaton use that site, as there can be a time lag between updates on that website and when they get added to the Fossilworks site. So they're pretty much the same, but one is slightly more up to date. I did a small internship project for a team of dinosaur researchers at the London Natural History Museum earlier this year using info mostly from the PBDB (upon their instruction), so i would say it is academically trusted in this field of study. Edited April 12, 2015 by Paleoworld-101 3 "In Africa, one can't help becoming caught up in the spine-chilling excitement of the hunt. Perhaps, it has something to do with a memory of a time gone by, when we were the prey, and our nights were filled with darkness..." -Eternal Enemies: Lions And Hyenas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rait Posted April 12, 2015 Author Share Posted April 12, 2015 I see. Thanks. I will use the PBDB now onwards for first hand reliable info. Isn't fossilworks.org maintained by some USA university? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boesse Posted April 12, 2015 Share Posted April 12, 2015 Most of the data on Fossilworks (PBDB) comes right from the published literature. Most of what's on Wikipedia comes from secondary sources and occasional well-known (or open access) primary sources, but is pretty spotty. Occasionally you'll find coverage that's actually better on Wikipedia - for example, as of 2011 when I last paid much attention to it, the Wikipedia page for bony toothed birds (Pelagornithidae) had many references to published records that were not yet on the PBDB. Coverage on the PBDB is spotty, and some taxa (e.g. sharks, sea birds) is notoriously poor, but better for others (marine mammals, for example). Many of the published references that have fossil occurrence data on the PBDB are not freely available and in many cases are unknown to casual/semi-casual Wikipedia editors. That being said, a major drawback of the PBDB is that data entry is based on the published literature more or less verbatim; in rare cases contributors will followup and refine a particular fossil occurrence where the fossil has been reidentified by a later article (alternatively, if two papers are published by different authors at different times and identifying the same fossil as different taxa, different contributors could enter each occurrence separately and not realize it's two names applied to the same fossil, and thus "double" the diversity count). Another issue is that the stratigraphic age of many fossils published longer than ten years ago has been refined or reassessed, but contributors generally default to whatever the paleontologist who reported the fossil said. Later paleontologists go onto the PBDB and see "hey, species X was present from 23-1.8 million years ago" and not realize that the original age was poorly known (e.g. "Miocene-Pliocene") and later work refined it to something like late Miocene (~8 Ma), but not bother chasing it up and take the PBDB at face value rather than actually reading stratigraphic literature. So, those are just a couple of things that bug me when reading papers where "here's age ranges for a ton of different species, all taken from the PBDB!" 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boesse Posted April 12, 2015 Share Posted April 12, 2015 They still use the same database. Yes, they have technically split, but fossilworks.org and paleodb.org now serve two different purposes, but from what I recall the latter is still based on the same database that is searchable on fossilworks. I see. Thanks. I will use the PBDB now onwards for first hand reliable info. Isn't fossilworks.org maintained by some USA university? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paleoworld-101 Posted April 12, 2015 Share Posted April 12, 2015 They still use the same database. Yes, they have technically split, but fossilworks.org and paleodb.org now serve two different purposes, but from what I recall the latter is still based on the same database that is searchable on fossilworks. Do you know why they split? From what i was told by the museum people at the NHM there was some kind of controversy or falling out amongst the people involved? "In Africa, one can't help becoming caught up in the spine-chilling excitement of the hunt. Perhaps, it has something to do with a memory of a time gone by, when we were the prey, and our nights were filled with darkness..." -Eternal Enemies: Lions And Hyenas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rait Posted April 12, 2015 Author Share Posted April 12, 2015 And I thought life was finally becoming easy for a science journalist ... I end up where I started from. *sigh* Why isn't there a simple solution for science writers? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Auspex Posted April 12, 2015 Share Posted April 12, 2015 Science is demanding, meticulous, challenging, fascinating, fulfilling...but it is never easy "There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant “Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley >Paleontology is an evolving science. >May your wonders never cease! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rait Posted April 14, 2015 Author Share Posted April 14, 2015 For a researcher involved in first-hand research with access to source material, yes it is indeed fascinating, challenging and demanding. For a journalist involved in selecting and rephrasing scientific research for public and no access to source research material, it only gets frustrating, strenuous and confusing Oh! To have a number of incompatible information sources and then to select one and go with it ... And then they say journalism and gambling are two distinct things ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Auspex Posted April 14, 2015 Share Posted April 14, 2015 It would be so much better if everyone cited their source material... "There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant “Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley >Paleontology is an evolving science. >May your wonders never cease! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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