Collaborative Research: Sustained Resources: The Paleobiology Database 2.0: Launching the next decade of education and research in the integrated geological and biological sciences

About This Grant

The Paleobiology Database (PBDB) is one of the most impactful and widely used digital representations of the fossil record, capturing our best understanding of the age, location, identity, and geological context of fossils. Data held in the PBDB have been used in over 2,000 scientific publications and in a wide range of educational and public outreach materials. The PBDB is an essential resource for geoscientists, biologists, students, educators, and the public. Although the research and educational impact of the PBDB is tremendous, there are key issues with its current computer infrastructure, which was designed in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This project will combine PBDB with the Integrative Paleobotany Portal (PBot) to create a more modern and flexible digital system: the PBDB 2.0. Planned project activities will transform the PBDB to be more useful to a broad community of researchers, educators, and students in the Earth and life sciences, as well as the general public. In particular, the PBDB will adopt features from PBot that will allow users to easily contribute and interact with fossil identifications tied to specimen images, and outreach activities will further motivate community participation with PBDB. This project undertakes a complete technological overhaul of the PBDB, one of the most prominent and widely used fossil databases. Technical improvements include coupling the PBDB with the PBot, whose cutting-edge conceptual framework provides innovative user-centric capabilities. Specifically, development of the PBDB 2.0 will: 1) overhaul the PBDB's data model, database, and application logic to integrate PBot functions, streamline data entry, and improve technical sustainability; 2) create a more capable application programming interface; 3) construct a new web application to leverage back-end upgrades and facilitate new science; and 4) host community events and activities to assess progress, train new members, mobilize data, and produce new educational/outreach materials. Long-term costs of paleobiological cyberinfrastructure will be substantially reduced by consolidating development effort, expanding the PBDB's current functionality to better serve a large community, enhancing overall user experiences, mobilizing new science-critical data, and improving alignments with other data systems. Upgrades will provide explicit support for uncertain taxonomic classification, introduce a more specimen-forward approach to organizing fossil data, make high quality specimen images available alongside data, and add workbench capabilities. Researchers from around the world will utilize the PBDB 2.0 to understand Earth history and Earth systems processes, conduct Rules of Life research, and interpret ecological and evolutionary change across all taxonomic groups, continents, and time periods. The refreshed PBDB 2.0 will make it easier for anyone in the broader community, from professional Earth and life scientists to children, to engage with fossil science. This award by the Geoinformatics program within the Division of Earth Sciences is jointly supported by the Infrastructure Capacity for Biological Research program within the Division of Biological Infrastructure. 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.