The New Zealand Fossil Record File: a unique database of biological history

ABSTRACT

The New Zealand Fossil Record File, an essentially complete compilation of New Zealand’s known fossil record, with additional records from parts of Antarctica, SW Pacific, and elsewhere, is, to the best of our knowledge, unique. It has developed collaboratively, with contributions from university, government, industry, and avocational paleontologists and geologists. The distinctive Fossil Record Number has become an icon of New Zealand geological literature since inception of the original paper-based archive in the 1940s. Subsequently, the file has been digitised and currently holds >100,000 locality records and >1,000,000 individual taxonomic identifications spanning numerous plant and animal phyla. These numbers are continually growing. The database contains contextual information on geographic location, collection, stratigraphy and lithology of the fossil localities as well as taxonomic analyses that retain original identifications yet accommodate re-assignments. The data have been widely applied, initially for mapping, establishing age, depositional environment, etc., and more recently including in quantitative biostratigraphy, assessing completeness of the fossil record, understanding biodiversity history, extinction risk assessments, and climate analysis. In this paper, we provide a brief overview of the history of the Fossil Record File, indicate the general nature of the data it contains, and showcase a number of innovative applications of this most valuable resource.

KEYWORDS:

• Biostratigraphy
• fossils
• FRED
• FRF
• Nationally Significant Collections and Databases
• New Zealand Fossil Record File
• paleontological database
• taxonomy
• world wide web

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, the authors thank the hundreds of geologists and paleontologists who have generously contributed data to the Fossil Record File and its forerunners, for more than 150 years, simply for the common good and furtherance of science. CDC additionally thanks Mark Rattenbury for suggesting this paper, Simon Nathan for helpful discussion, and Martin Crundwell for the SEM image of Globoquadrina dehiscens. The authors are very grateful to Neville Hudson, Mark Uhen, one anonymous reviewer and the Editor, Erica Crouch, for suggesting improvements to the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study.

Additional information

Funding

The New Zealand Fossil Record File is funded by Strategic Science Investment Funding provided by the New Zealand Government, Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), to GNS Science as part of the Nationally Significant Collections and Databases programme.