Digitizing the Past: UNM scientist curates digital fossil database

UNM Earth and Planetary Sciences professor Dr. Corinne Myers is working to build a database of fossils from the Western Interior Seaway. In this video, she gives us a look inside her work so far.

Myers’ focus of research revolves around fossils that range in age from 100 to 66 million years old from the ancient Western Interior Seaway. She was granted an NSF award in the summer of 2016 to catalogue these fossils on to a public, online, digital database console.

The Arctos Database currently houses between 2,000 – 3,000 digitized specimens, the majority of which are from the Western Interior Seaway. As curator, Myers’ role is to manage the preservation and use of the collection for research and outreach.

“The long-term goals of the digitization project is to get all of our late cretaceous specimens uploaded into this arctos database, online, and available for researchers around the world,” Myers said.