| NSF Org: |
DBI Division of Biological Infrastructure |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | July 20, 2019 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | January 28, 2022 |
| Award Number: | 1902262 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Reed Beaman
rsbeaman@nsf.gov (703)292-7163 DBI Division of Biological Infrastructure BIO Directorate for Biological Sciences |
| Start Date: | September 1, 2019 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2023 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $174,607.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $228,148.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2022 = $53,541.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
900 EXPOSITION BLVD LOS ANGELES CA US 90007-4057 (213)744-3301 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
900 Exposition Blvd Los Angeles CA US 90007-4057 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): |
Capacity: Bio Collections, Digitization, Sedimentary Geo & Paleobiology |
| Primary Program Source: |
01001920DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.074 |
ABSTRACT
An award is made to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County's (NHMLA) Invertebrate Paleontology collections to support their contribution to the Cretaceous World Digitization Thematic Collections Network (CW-TCN) funded by NSF's Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Program. The primary goal of this project, "Connecting the Cretaceous Seas" Partner to Existing Network (CSC-PEN), is to digitize fossil marine invertebrates and vertebrates from the Western Interior Seaway (central North America), California, and the northeastern Pacific (Oregon-Alaska). These efforts will make thousands of new specimen records digitally available online. Collectively, these data will compliment the CW-TCN by filling gaps in the existing dataset, broadening its geographic and taxonomic coverage, and making these otherwise difficult to access collections significantly more visible to the interested public and research community. This information will facilitate current research aiming to better understand an interval of Earth's history during which warmer climates and marine flooding prevailed across North America. Results of this project will be communicated to the public through museum events, K-12 classroom programming, ongoing partnerships with local avocational paleontologists, and Virtual Field Experiences being coordinated by NHMLA on behalf of the CW-TCN.
Benefits to be derived from this award include digitization of more than 32,000 marine invertebrate specimens from underrepresented areas of the Western Interior Seaway and Northeastern Pacific, and an additional 2,700 marine vertebrate fossils from the Western Interior Seaway and California. Notably, the addition of specimens from the Northeastern Pacific will create a bridge between recently digitized NHMLA collections from the Late Cretaceous of California with the existing focus of the CW-TCN in central North America. Such an expansion will complement current CW-TCN datasets, permitting the comparison of paleoecological niche modeling analyses in various paleoceanographic settings and enabling biogeographic comparisons of diversity change, ecosystem structure, and environmental change during a critical interval of Earth's history. Digitization will also involve the selective imaging of more than 2,000 specimens and georeferencing of over 750 localities. Notably, this project will digitally mobilize fossil data that have never before been available to aggregators, and, in doing so, will expand the NHMLA's capacity to share collections data through additional staff training. Digitized data from this project will be shared with iDigBio (idigbio.org) and made accessible via this resource.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
Outcomes
The Connecting the Cretaceous Seas PEN (CSC-PEN) added significant new collections of Late Cretaceous marine invertebrates and vertebrates to the dataset being generated by the ongoing Cretaceous World TCN (CW-TCN). This project allowed the integration of museum collections data from the Western Interior Seaway (central North America) with that of the Eastern Pacific Slope (Alaska through Baja California). This in turn will facilitate ecological niche modeling, biogeographic analyses, and biodiversity assessment over a larger and more environmentally diverse area than was originally proposed by the CW-TCN.
The project included fossils from three collections housed at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHMLA): Invertebrate Paleontology (LACM-IP), Vertebrate Paleontology (LACM-VP), and the Dinosaur Institute (LACM-DI), and all of the resulting specimen data has been made available online through iDigBio and GBIF. Staff, students, and volunteers supported through the grant were engaged in physical curation, electronic, and digital imaging (2D & 3D) of fossil specimens. The project supported 3 recently graduated students (2 of whom identify as minority), many volunteers, and 3 early career museum professionals. The NHMLA ultimately digitized nearly 35,000 specimens (more than 98% of the number of specimens initially projected) for CSC-PEN, and a significant number of localities for specimens not yet digitized have been georeferenced. Notably, these filled gaps in presently available knowledge on invertebrate fossils from the Cretaceous of Oregon and digitally accessible data on marine vertebrate fossils from California.
The LACM-DI collection advanced its data stewardship, digital image management, and georeferencing to the extent that it published it’s first data to iDigBio and GBIF. Expanding adoption of the museum’s collection management platform and having additional collections serve data to iDigBio and GBIF was one of the CSC-PEN’s secondary objectives. Broader impacts were achieved through acquisition of digital materials for the Digital Atlas and Virtual Field Experience, training and professional development for two post-baccalaureates, and engagement of teachers from under-resourced and minority-serving K-12 schools in South Los Angeles with the support of the California State University Dominguez Hills CA STEM Institution for Innovation and Improvement. Results of the prohect have been presented at multiple conferences, through museum education and public programming, and in an ongoing and very popular exhibit in NHMLA, “Los Angeles Underwater”.
Last Modified: 02/12/2024
Modified by: Austin J Hendy
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