Saturday, January 11

Meet FRED: The world’s 1st-ever, almost total fossil database

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in FRED period types and . ( : GNS )

is the only nation on the planet that has a basically total, -access database of its recognized fossil .

It' existed for nearly 80 years, starting in 1946 as a filing cabinet packed with kinds at the Zealand Geological . The was the effort of Harold Wellman– the pioneering who notoriously found New Zealand's 370-mile-long Alpine Fault– and a couple of others dealing with the very first geological of .

“They desired access to all this in a standardized, available method,” stated Crampton, a at Te Herenga Waka– Victoria University of Wellington. “It was a fantastic concept.”

The types designated a referral and an to places, and taped the fossils seen or gathered there, in to on stratigraphy and the ' grain , weathering, and .

Since it started so early in New Zealand's clinical , pulling the couple of existing into the database “was workable in a manner that wasn't workable anywhere else on the planet,” Crampton stated.

Approximately comparable databases do exist in other nations, and some, like the Database, consist of more records. None has such density of of a whole , stated GNS Science's Chris Clowes, the existing custodian of the – called FRED.

The fossil record is an incredibly partial chronicle of in the he's mindful to explain. New Zealand has an exceptionally abundant of fossils, particularly from the Late and later durations, and the database represents “a really total protection of the insufficient record that have. Of the fossils we have, a big percentage of them have actually been caught,” Clowes stated.

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Over the years, the records moved from to and the were recalibrated from royal to metric. FRED now includes more than 100,000 entries, primarily from New Zealand, however likewise from the southeastern and the Ross Sea area of .

The database is thought about “an of New Zealand geological ,” according to a short article in 2020 by Clowes and others.

Open to All

Anybody can to access to FRED's and an . 4 managers from various evaluate the entries and apparent . “We have all sorts of contributing , from rank beginners to paleontologists,” Clowes stated.

In the years because its beginning, the database and the spirit of and it embodies have actually ended up being a vital part of New Zealand's geological and – and the of worldwide coworkers, stated Daphne Lee,

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