Digital Atlas of Ancient Life
| Category | Price | Seller | Device |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reference | Free | Rodney C Spears | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
The Digital Atlas of Ancient Life Electronic Field Guide App is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation to principal investigators Dr. Bruce Lieberman (University of Kansas), Dr. Alycia Stigall (Ohio University), and Dr. Jonathan Hendricks (San Jose State University). The grant is titled, "Digitizing Fossils to Enable New Syntheses in Biogeography - Creating a PALEONICHES-TCN" (TCN stands for Thematic Collections Network).
This project is related to a broader natural history specimen digitization effort supported by the National Resource for Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections (ADBC) called Integrated Digitized Biocollections, or iDigBio.
The main portal page for the Digital Atlas of Ancient Life project can be accessed at www.digitalatlasofancientlife.org. For additional information about the project, please see the recently published open-access paper by Hendricks, Stigall, and Lieberman (2015) in Palaeontologia Electronica. The individual websites can be accessed at: Ordovician Atlas, Pennsylvanian Atlas, and Neogene Atlas.
Funding for development and construction of this webpage was provided by the National Science Foundation (EF-1206757, EF-1206769, and EF-1206750)
Reviews
Brilliant!
CDoggie909
This app is perfect for anyone that loves fossils! It's so easy to use and a lot of fun too.
Very disappointing and poorly designed
François-Marie Arouet
It only covers three periods (Ordovician, Pennsylvanian, and Neogene), and for those it only covers selected invertebrates in a few states in the eastern US, with a different set of states for each time period. It doesn't even have Pennsylvania as one of the states for the Pennsylvanian, funnily enough. The content it has for those is a list of some of the invertebrates found there, but they're organised taxonomically, so you have to already know what genus something is in to look it up. The photos are very limited and often undiagnostic, and the descriptions are fairly technical, just what's easily available in free databases. Some of the information is inaccurate, or at the very least imprecise (like claiming that Rusophycus is recognised in rocks from the Cambrian up to the present, or having incomplete occurrence data). The design is not especially helpful, requiring users to tap through multiple times for ichnotaxa due to a poorly imagined plan to categorise them like other taxonomic groupings. The least the developers could have done is built a dichotomous key for the limited specimens, time periods, and locations they cover, but it seems that not even that is included. This is a free app, so an amateur paleontologist might still want to get it just to have something to look at, but don’t expect this to be a useful resource — it’s not.
Minimally useful app fails to meet users in the field
Hemiarges
I second all opinions shared in françois-marie arouet's thorough review. More than that, it's clear the authors never considered the mobile audience for this atlas. • The mobile audience is undeniably folks in the field who likely don't know what Period's rocks they're looking at in the first place — much less the phylum of the fossil in front of them. • The mobile audience is mostly folks looking at a possible fossil that is likely fragmentary or in a mode of preservation not represented in the Atlas's photos, which are instead presented in the minimally useful "single best specimen" manner of systematic paleontogical work. Speaking of the photos, why so tiny given the 100MB app size? • The mobile audience wants to know something about the animal, not just a species name and a stratigraphic account. Not even a minimal paleobiological or paleoecological account is provided. • The mobile audience knows one thing for sure: their exact geographic location. But the app fails to leverage GPS to help guide the user, and the locality maps are surprisingly incomplete, not showing any of the available formation-by-formation detail for geologic maps of these regions. The existence of this app is clearly due to "app" being used as a buzzword in the author's' NSF grant. There is very little usefulness in what could have been an exciting and engaging app. Authors outside the scientific establishment could do a much better job, and hopefully some will. Moral of the story: Science is like sex — it's too important to be left to the professionals.
Not working.
BJN2
It's a free app and version 1.0, so I would give it some credit if it worked. But it displays nothing for any of the three time periods.
Works well
Trilolight
This app works well on every iPad and iPhone I've tried it on. Further, the maps are zoomable to any degree of resolution. Select among the time periods and then start or browse. It can be used to identify fossils or places with fossils.
Good for quick IDs
MotherofDinos
The browse feature allows users to see the full set of species for each taxon in the three time periods. This makes a nice, quick way to navigate and identify specimens without working through the hierarchy. Good images and nice map feature for the focal areas.
Classroom teacher
Jackie Van Asdlan
I found this app accidentally while looking up photos of fossils and loved it immediately. I found it easy to navigate with very nice photos. It was fun to explore and I feel I will be useful in my classroom. I plan on using it on a field trip I am planning. Thanks to the creators for a new, useful tool for teachers.
Really informative
Saucey and Wubs
I downloaded this app for my teenage son who is fascinated with examining fossils and their histories. Not only are the photos and maps very clear and descriptive, but this app is super easy to use, easily transitioning from fossil to fossil. He loves it!
Good app
Msfossil
This is a wonderful app for teaching older children and the public about the world of fossils. The information is interesting and educational. My children love it.
