| Votes | By | Price | Discipline | Year Launched |
| PaleoBioDB | OPEN SOURCE | Paleontology |
The Paleobiology Database (PBDB) is one of the most comprehensive, community-driven repositories of fossil data in the world, providing open access to detailed records of ancient life spanning hundreds of millions of years. Developed and maintained by an international collective of paleontologists, PBDB consolidates fossil occurrences, taxonomic information, geographic coordinates, stratigraphic intervals, and ecological context into a searchable and analyzable format. It is widely regarded as an essential resource for macroevolutionary research, biodiversity studies, paleoecology, and geoscience education.
1. Mission and Scientific Value
PBDB’s mission is straightforward yet profound:
to provide a standardized, global database of fossil evidence to support reproducible, large-scale analyses of life’s history.
By aggregating expert-curated fossil observations from published literature and fieldwork, PBDB enables researchers to address fundamental questions about Earth’s evolutionary past:
- How has biodiversity changed across geological time?
- What environmental factors shaped extinction events?
- How do biogeographic patterns evolve?
- How do clades originate, radiate, and decline?
PBDB’s open-access approach democratizes paleontological research, allowing students, independent scholars, and scientists in low-resource environments to access the same data as major research institutions.
2. Data Coverage and Structure
PBDB stores a wide range of information tied to fossil occurrences, including:
- Taxonomy: genus, species, higher-level classification
- Temporal data: stratigraphic layers, geologic periods, age ranges
- Geographical coordinates: paleocoordinates and modern coordinates
- Environment & ecology: habitat type, taphonomy, life habits
- Collection metadata: references, collectors, field notes
Each data point is linked back to peer-reviewed sources, ensuring traceability and scientific credibility.
Its structure supports advanced analyses, enabling users to export data for modeling macroevolutionary trends, extinction rates, origination dynamics, and turnover patterns.
3. Tools and Interfaces
PBDB offers multiple interfaces that make the data accessible across skill levels:
a. PBDB Navigator
A user-friendly visualization portal that displays fossil distributions through time on interactive maps, time axes, and stratigraphic layers. Ideal for educators and students.
b. PBDB API
A robust programmatic interface for researchers working in Python, R, or other analytical environments. Supports advanced queries and bulk data extraction.
c. PBDB Classic Interface
The original search interface, still widely used for targeted queries and metadata exploration.
d. Third-party tools
PBDB powers many external applications, including Macrostrat, TimeScale Creator, and various paleobiology teaching modules.