Agenda

Edward B. Davis, Department of Earth Sciences - University of Oregon

Titolo: Differences and similarities in collecting modern and paleontological data. Workshop on online, free, standardized repositories

Abstract:
In the last few years, research institutes have been deeply addressing the effects of climatic change and how to preserve and share the huge amount of relevant information preserved in their collections. They have engaged in an extensive effort to make accessible all the data to people in a precise, synthetized, and fast way, allowing researchers to better understand our natural environment and the Earth system as a whole. Those data are always not homogeneous, coming as local records of observations, dried organic materials, specimens preserved in alcohol, thin sections, herbarium sheets, skeletal elements, DNA records, publications, historical photos, fossil bones, and so on. Today, many online platforms allow researchers to download such data in a standardized database, mostly as data matrixes. During the seminar, prof. Davis will explain details and give examples of the way some of the most powerful repositories are organized and what kind of data researchers can obtain and sometimes upload from them, with practical examples for the fossil record. He will stress their consistency in terms of quality and completeness.

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Meeting ID: 874 7428 4419

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This seminar opens a series of 4 meeting focused on the importance of employing the fossil record with modern faunal data. The next meetings are:

• July 15th: professor Edward B. Davis: “Paleontological faunal ecosystems as a key to understanding the processes influencing extant species distribution”
• July 22nd: Samantha S. Hopkins, professor at the University of Oregon: title to be defined
• August 12: Nick Famoso, chief paleontologist at the John Day Fossil Bed National Monument: “In the shadow of volcanoes: western volcanoes and ecosystems through time”

Bio Sketch:
Edward Davis is an Associate Professor at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, USA. He is a paleobiologist who is interested in the way environmental change has affected the shapes of mammal skeletons, tracking how global warming or cooling has influenced the proportion of bones and teeth in large mammals. He is also interested in the way the the headgear of ruminants (goats, giraffes, gazelles, elk, and their relatives) has evolved to reflect both sexual selection and physical limitations on growth. The uniting theme of Dr. Davis’ work has been numerical data analysis, so he has become an expert in the intersection of informatics and paleontology, working with several database projects to make it easier for researchers to share their data and find the data of others.