FRED :: The Fossil Record Electronic Database

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Polygon Search

The polygon search has actually been available for a long time, but it is tucked away at the bottom of the Simple Query form where it is easily overlooked so we have decided to highlight it here. This function permits users to zoom in on a map and mark out an arbitrary area of interest by drawing a polygon around it, which selects all of the fossil localities within the polygon for the query. In principle, you can select an area anywhere in the world, although of course there are relatively few FRF entries outside of New Zealand and the Ross Dependency. From the Simple Query form, press the button labelled “Create map polygon” to get started.

Consensus Age

A partial implementation of the consensus age feature was added to FRED at the end of 2017 and full implementation completed in 2020. The idea is to automatically calculate a “best fit” age for each sample using all available information. In many cases, the calculation is trivial, because only one age assessment is available. In cases where a number of age assessments have been made, however, it is often convenient to have available an age which is consistent with all of them.

The fine detail of the “rules” by which the consensus ages are derived are quite complicated, but the general principles are easily explained:

If one or more “adopted ages” have been manually assigned to the sample, the most recent one is taken.
If other age assessments (known, inferred, paleontological) overlap, then the interval of overlap is taken as the consensus age.
If other age assessments are mutually exclusive, the full age range required to include all of them is taken as the consensus age.

Inclusive (“broad”) and exclusive (“narrow”) variations are provided, depending on whether you want to try and net all possibilities, or narrow down to a short list. Further explanation is available from hyperlinks on the form itself, but experimentation is probably the best way to find what works best for your own research.

Featured Application

Over the years, FRF data have contributed directly to a great deal of both fundamental and economically significant applied Earth science, ranging from taxonomic studies to regional mapping. More recently, the ready availability of powerful desktop computing and ubiquitous analytical software such as R have allowed large custom data extracts to be statistically analysed to reveal important insights. One we will showcase here, by Womack and colleagues, investigated the long-term (~40 million years) relationship between climate, biodiversity, and biogeographic patterns. Using FRED data, Womack et al. (2021) showed that the shallow-marine fossil record of New Zealand exhibits a positive relationship between oceanic temperature and both the number of species and the number of ecological functional groups in an area. One implication of this relationship is that the duplication of functional roles by multiple species (functional redundancy) increases with temperature, a pattern that may have general relevance to marine ecosystems around the world and to the resilience of ecosystems in a warming world.

Womack, TM; Crampton, JS; Hannah, MJ; Collins, KS 2021: A positive relationship between functional redundancy and temperature in Cenozoic marine ecosystems. Science 373: 1027–1029.

Several other case studies in which FRF data played a pivotal role are briefly described in Clowes et al. 2021, NZJGG 64: 62.