New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science paleontological database

The entire catalogued paleontological collection of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science (NMMNH), including 35,902+ fossils from New Mexico, is now online and searchable by the general public, avocational paleontologist, researcher, and geoscience educator. The Web site does not include sensitive geographic localities, but all aspects of the taxonomy, stratigraphy, and chronology of the specimens are viewable at http://164.64.11 9.14/nmmnh/web /default.html. The NMMNH’s collection encompasses fossils from 5,630+ localities (5,115+ in New Mexico) ranging in age from Cambrian to Holocene and representing almost every county in New Mexico. The online database is searchable by taxonomic, stratigraphic, chronologic, and geographic criteria, using a “drill-down” approach that takes advantage of the hierarchical nature of these data to search for specimens or localities at several discrete levels. Taxonomic categories are principally Linnean ranks (class, order, family, genus). Stratigraphic criteria include group, formation, and member. Chronologic criteria are era, period, epoch, stage, and land vertebrate biochron (= land mammal “age”). Geographic criteria are country, state, county, and 7.5-min topographic quadrangle. Complex (Boolean) searches are not presently a feature of the online database. However, chronologic, stratigraphic, and geographic searches will yield complete faunal lists by locality. Additionally, more than 1,400 of the specimens in the database are illustrated digitally, and a digital image (.jpg) of the fossil will appear if it is selected. We envision a wide range of research and outreach opportunities based on this database. For example, geologic mappers can readily learn the number and age of all NMMNH fossil localities on a 7.5-min topographic quadrangle. Similarly, educators and their students can compile questions about fossil faunas from particular areas, times, or stratigraphic units from New Mexico or elsewhere.