The Paleobiology Database is a public database of paleontological data that anyone can use, maintained by an international non-governmental group of paleontologists. You can explore the data online in the Navigator, which lets you filter fossil occurrences by time, space, and taxonomy, and displays their modern and paleogeographic locations; or you can download the data to your own computer to do your own analyses.
The database is currently undergoing a major renovation to better serve its users. Stay tuned! In the meantime, check out the FAQ and the people who make this database possible.
Fossil occurrences from scientific publications are added to the database by our contributing members. Thanks to our membership, which includes nearly 400 scientists from over 130 institutions in 24 countries, the Paleobiology Database is able to provide scientists and the public with information about the fossil record.
If you're a researcher and would like to contribute data, please contact the Secretary to get an account set up, and then see our data entry tutorials for tips on getting started.
If you're using the PBDB in your own publications, please contact the Secretary to get a publication number for your accepted manuscript.
Want to use the Paleobiology Database as a teaching resource? Many mobile and web apps that put our data to use are available in the app gallery. Several lesson plans using PBDB data are also available, and we're working on adding more.
If you've developed teaching resources that you'd like to share with the rest of the PBDB community, please contact us so that we can make them available to others.
Can't find an application that fits your needs or matches your vision? Build your own application! The Paleobiology Database Application Programming Interface (API) enables scientists, students, and developers to write programs that access taxonomic, spatial, and temporal data contained within the database.
To get started building your own application for data analysis, visualization, or acquisition, head over to the API documentation. When you are ready to share your work, let us know so that we can add it to our apps gallery and help spread the word.
