Christopher Pirrone excavating an odontocete skull (photo by Robert Boessenecker)

Perhaps it’s understandable that paleontologists are committed to preserving the scientific record, since they spend a lot of time and energy finding and extracting shreds of evidence millions of years old.  Now, thanks to a partnership between Dryad and The Paleontological Society announced last year [1], coupled with strong data archiving policies adopted by two of its journals (Paleobiology and the Journal of Paleontology), a rich trove of data will be available for future researchers to unearth from Dryad.

For both journals, authors are being instructed to deposit the underlying data at the time their manuscript is submitted, so that editors and referees will be able to review it prior to acceptance.  Once published on Dryad, the data will be independently discoverable and citable, while at the same time prominently linked both to and from the original article.  Researchers are able to track the reuse impact of their data, independent of the citation impact of their article, by monitoring downloads from Dryad.

Preserved for ages.

Smilodon, by Charles Knight (1905), from a mural at the American Museum of Natural History.

Here’s an example from a recent issue of Paleobiology to sink your teeth into:

Article: Meachen-Samuels JA (2012) Morphological convergence of the prey-killing arsenal of sabertooth predators. Paleobiology 38(1): 1-14. doi:10.1666/10036.1

Data: Meachen-Samuels JA (2012) Data from: Morphological convergence of the prey-killing arsenal of sabertooth predators. Dryad Digital Repository. http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.h58q6

References:

[1]  Callaway E (2011) Fossil data enter the web period. Nature 472, 150. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/472150a