Vertebrate Paleontology Databases
Search the University of Florida Vertebrate Paleontology Collection
The Florida Museum of Natural History Division of Vertebrate Paleontology houses three separately catalogued collections of fossil vertebrates: the museum's own collection (official acronym UF); the collection formerly housed by the Florida Geological Survey (UF/FGS); and the collection amassed by the late Pierce Brodkorb of the Department of Zoology at the University of Florida (UF/PB). A pull-down menu on the search web page gives you the option of searching all three collections simultaneously (the default condition) or searching each of the three collections individually.
Using the Online Vertebrate Paleontology Database
We recommended use of the "wildcard" option when conducting searches that include the Epoch, Land Mammal Age, Nature of Specimen, or Site fields.
The Site field contains the name of the fossil-producing locality. The Site Key field contains an alphanumeric code that was originally used by our in-house database to relate our specimen and locality databases, but over time these codes have become equivalent to the locality numbers used by many paleontology collections and have appeared in some publications. A site key value of "OK1" was formerly used for specimens with no or relatively little locality data; the locality data (if any) for such specimens is stored in the remarks field of our in-house database and not available online. Questions regarding available data for such specimens should be directed to the vertebrate paleontology collections manager.
Those using the online specimen database for research purposes should be aware that some of our localities produce fossils of different geologic ages. For example, fossils collected from the spoil piles in a particular mine or from the bed of particular river may include a mixture of Miocene and Pleistocene specimens. Since 2001, we have consistently assigned different (although often related) Site Key codes for each age produced at each locality, but in prior years sometimes only a single code was used. This may produce specimens with incorrect data in their Epoch and Land Mammal Age fields, for example a Miocene-age Equus. The VP staff is correcting these problems as they are encountered, but some are expected to linger for years. Users of the online database are encouraged to report results that produce anomalous responses to the vertebrate paleontology collections manager.
We use the following conventions in the Nature of Specimen field to describe which part or parts of the skeleton are present:
- For mammals, the term "mandible" is used instead of "dentary" or "hemimandible" or "lower jaw;" in non-mammalian taxa, "dentary" is used if the specimen consists only of the dentary bone and "mandible" if bones such are the articular, angular, etc. are present along with the dentary.
- For mammalian teeth, the abbreviations I, C, P, and M are frequently used for incisor, canine, premolar, and molar, respectively. A numeral following one of these refers to a specific tooth, e.g., P3 is the third molar. A "D" before I, C, or P indicates a deciduous tooth.
- Multiple bones or elements are separated by semicolons. If there is field or anatomical evidence that these belonged to the same individual, the term "associated" will be at the end of the Nature of Specimen field. If this field contains a number enclosed within parentheses, that indicates the number of such specimens, e.g., "humerus, right; rib (12); vertebra, thoracic (6), associated" represents a partial skeleton of a single individual for which we recovered 12 ribs and 6 thoracic vertebrae.
- Incomplete specimens are indicated by the use of the term "partial" in the nature of specimen field, although this term is not used for specimens which are 80 per cent or more complete and not missing any significant portion. Specimens in the UF/FGS catalogue and those in the UF collection with catalogue numbers less than 30000 often do not use this convention and also often have scanty information describing the nature of the specimen.
- The inner ear bone of mammals is called the "petrosal" except for cetaceans, sirenians, and bats. Following standard convention, the inner ear bone of these mammals is called the "periotic."
History of the Collections
University of Florida Main Collection
The UF main collection contains about 335,000 specimens assigned to over 220,000 unique catalogue numbers. This collection contains over 150 holotypes and 250 other type specimens. The UF collection has experienced rapid, sometimes explosive, growth since the 1950s and now ranks in the top five nationally in terms of total catalogued specimens. Consistent with our museum's mission as the official repository for Florida's natural history specimens, about 90 per cent of this collection comes from about 1,000 separate localities throughout Florida. A particular strength of the UF collection is the extraordinary array of land-animals from the past 25 million years in Florida, forming the best record documenting the evolution of ancient vertebrate life in eastern North America over this interval. Other major strengths of the UF collection include extensive holdings from Haiti, the Dominican Republic, the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, and other Caribbean islands, fossils from Central and South America (especially Bolivia and Honduras), and specimens from the late Eocene to Oligocene "Badlands" of western Nebraska. On-going field work begun by our new curator Jonathan Bloch in 2004 will over time produce a significant collection from the Paleogene basins of Wyoming.
Florida Geological Survey Collection
The Florida Geological Survey fossil vertebrate collection (FGS) was started during the 1910s and was originally housed in Tallahassee. Under the direction of E. H. Sellards, Herman Gunter, and S. J. Olsen, the FGS collection was the primary source of fossil vertebrate descriptions from Florida until the early 1960s. World-renown paleontologists such as George G. Simpson, Edwin H. Colbert, and Henry F. Osborn wrote scientific papers about specimens in the FGS collection in addition to Sellards and Olsen. In 1976 the entire FGS fossil vertebrate collection was transferred to the Florida Museum of Natural History with support from a National Science Foundation grant. The UF/FGS collection is composed of about 22,000 specimens assigned to about 10,000 catalogue numbers, and almost all of them were collected in Florida. The majority of specimens in the UF/FGS collection are mammals, followed by reptiles, birds, and a relatively small number of amphibians and fish. Although there are some sites that are unique to the UF/FGS collection, many of the sites overlap with holdings in the main UF and UF/PB collections. The major strengths of the UF/FGS collection are historically important samples from the early Miocene Thomas Farm locality, the middle Miocene and early Pliocene deposits of the Bone Valley Region, Polk County, and from the late Pleistocene Vero locality, Indian River County. Researchers using the UF/FGS database should be aware that when the catalogue data for the FGS collection was first transferred from the original file cards to a computerized database in the late 1980s, relatively little effort was made to correct or improve entries. The nature of specimen was not indicated on many of the cards, locality information was sometimes vague, and many employed taxonomic names that are no longer in use. While some corrections have subsequently been made to this database, limitations of time and resources have prevented an exhaustive clean-up. Also, when Sellards left Florida for Texas in the 1920s, he transferred some, but not all, of the holotypes in the FGS collection that he had named to the USNM collection, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Pierce Brodkorb Collection
The Pierce Brodkorb Collection (UF/PB) was amassed by Professor Brodkorb of the University of Florida over his long and renown career as one of the world's foremost experts on fossil birds. His heirs donated his extensive collections of modern bird skeletons and fossil birds to the Florida Museum of Natural History in 1992. The modern skeletons are housed by the museum's Ornithology collection. Brodkorb's fossil bird collection was curated and computer catalogued with support from the National Science Foundation. The UF/PB collection is composed of about 8,500 catalogued specimens and includes 42 holotypes. About 85 per cent of the UF/PB specimens were collected in Florida, and range in age from early Miocene to latest Pleistocene. Other large holdings are Pleistocene birds from Bermuda and the Bahamas.
Send comments or inquiries to the VP Database Manager: rhulbert@flmnh.ufl.edu.
We seek and encourage input from Users about the VP databases and request that you send us any comments and suggestions about errors or inconsistencies that might be determined during your use of this resource. We reserve the right to modify, or not to modify, the existing database in response to your comments.