EarthLife Consortium: Supporting digital paleobiology

Abstract

Paleobiology is a classic example of a ‘longtail’ discipline, with the large majority of paleobiological data collected by individuals organized into tight guilds of specialists. Most paleobiologists have a domain of expertise centered on a particular set of organisms (or even on particular fossilized body parts within organisms), a geographic region, and a time period or timescale. For example, one paleobiologist might be an expert on leaves and seeds from the Paleogene of North America (leaving the fossil pollen and other microfossils to other specialists) (e.g. Wing et al. 2009), another might specialize in stable isotope measurements from bones and teeth (e.g. DeSantis et al. 2009), while a third might be a specialist in marine foraminifera, working with oceansediment cores collected from across the world (e.g. barker et al. 2005). These scientists also pursue varied research agendas, both as individuals and research teams.