- Home
- :
- All Communities
- :
- Events
- :
- DevSummit Conference
- :
- DevSummit Past User Presentations
- :
- Innovations in Fossil Occurrence Data Curation: La...
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Mark as New
- Mark as Read
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Printer Friendly Page
- Report Inappropriate Content
Innovations in Fossil Occurrence Data Curation: La Brea Tar Pits 2D Web Map Application & 3D Visualization of Associated American Lion and Sabertoothed Cat Skeletons
Innovations in Fossil Occurrence Data Curation: La Brea Tar Pits 2D Web Map Application & 3D Visualization of Associated American Lion and Sabertoothed Cat Skeletons
The occurrence of fossil rich asphaltic localities within and surrounding the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum in Los Angeles, California is extensive and has been recorded for decades as non-spatial data collected in a non-spatial database. The motivation for this project stemmed from the author’s time as a volunteer at the Museum over the course of one year. The Museum needed an efficient way to cartographically display the positional data of fossils within the dense deposits in which they were found. At the time of this study, this project was the first GIS project that the Museum had ever supported for mapping of fossils at this site. The main objectives were to design and implement a fossil excavation spatial database, digitally curate these data that previously only existed in paper form, display the positional information of fossils in a user-friendly web GIS application, and develop a framework to support spatial analysis and live data feeds in the future.
As part of this study, known fossil localities were manually digitized from a 1915 survey map last updated in 1983. The Museum’s existing database of fossil localities was combined with the latest digitized features to support the development of a new spatial database of all known fossil localities within the park. The fossil features contained in the spatial database were then published through an innovative web map application designed to help guide future Museum GIS projects.
Visualizing the location of fossils using this interactive web map is a powerful tool that may guide future paleontology in the park, as well as providing a valuable educational component for the Museum’s visitors. For example, a small extract of these data from an associated American lion and sabertoothed cat skeletons were used as a 3D visualization in order to map the x, y, and z (depth) coordinates of each element within the deposit. Future work is still necessary to automate specimen location data to a format that can be viewed in 3D in GIS. It is the author’s hope that this web map project will contribute to the literature on documentation visualization of extensive fossil deposits, leading to advances in 3D web-enabled fossil geodatabases and web applications.
Authors: Kacey Pham - USC M.S. GIST 2015, Aisling Farrell - Collections Manager, La Brea Tar Pits and Museum
