Description
Public records from the Department of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. These data cover accessioned specimens representing fossil invertebrates, vertebrates, and plants from all over the world and include more than 139,000 paleobiological type specimen records.
Data Records
The data in this occurrence resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 725,968 records.
1 extension data tables also exist. An extension record supplies extra information about a core record. The number of records in each extension data table is illustrated below.
This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.
Versions
The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.
How to cite
Researchers should cite this work as follows:
Orrell T, Informatics and Data Science Center - Digital Stewardship, Informatics Office (2025). NMNH Paleobiology Specimen Records (USNM). Version 1.93. National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. Occurrence dataset. https://collections.nmnh.si.edu/ipt/resource?r=nmnh_paleo_dwc-a&v=1.93
Rights
Researchers should respect the following rights statement:
The publisher and rights holder of this work is National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. To the extent possible under law, the publisher has waived all rights to these data and has dedicated them to the Public Domain (CC0 1.0). Users may copy, modify, distribute and use the work, including for commercial purposes, without restriction.
GBIF Registration
This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: c8681cc2-9d0a-4c5f-b620-5c753abfe2bc. National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by GBIF-US.
Keywords
Occurrence; Specimen; Occurrence
Contacts
- Metadata Provider ●
- Originator ●
- Point Of Contact
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1038-3028
- Originator ●
- Point Of Contact
- Metadata Provider
- Point Of Contact
Geographic Coverage
Global collections, National Museum of Natural History (USNM), Smithsonian Institution
| Bounding Coordinates | South West [-90, -180], North East [90, 180] |
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Taxonomic Coverage
No Description available
| Kingdom | Animalia (Animals), Plantae (Plants), Protoctista (Protists) |
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Temporal Coverage
| Formation Period | 19th Century - current |
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Additional Metadata
While every effort is made to provide accurate information, use of these databases is entirely at your own risk. The National Museum of Natural History makes no warranty, either express or implied, regarding the completeness, accuracy, or currency of the information in the databases or its suitability for any particular purpose. Where the use of this data is critical to scientific investigation, scholarly publication, or policy decisions, the user is responsible for verifying identities and provenance against specimens and other primary data sources.
| Alternative Identifiers | c8681cc2-9d0a-4c5f-b620-5c753abfe2bc |
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| https://collections.nmnh.si.edu/ipt/resource?r=nmnh_paleo_dwc-a |