FosSahul

FosSahul provides a centralized database of dated non-human vertebrate megafauna fossil records from Sahul spanning the late Quaternary to support palaeoecological and biodiversity analyses.

Key Features:

• Taxonomic and geographic scope: Covers dated non-human vertebrate megafauna fossil records from Sahul spanning the late Quaternary.
• Record count: FosSahul 2.0 incorporates 11,871 dated fossil records compiled from publications up to 2018.
• Standardized ages: Compiles and standardizes fossil ages, with the original compilation covering ages published up to 2013 and the 2.0 update extending to 2018.
• Methodological metadata: Includes detailed methodological information for each fossil record.
• Automated quality rating: Implements an algorithm that automates the quality-rating process for fossil entries to produce reproducible and consistent data-quality assessments.
• Temporal correlation support: Enables correlation of megafauna temporal patterns with paleoclimate indices spanning the past 180,000 years.

Scientific Applications:

• Palaeoecological analyses: Facilitates palaeoecological analyses of temporal and taxonomic patterns in Sahul's non-human vertebrate megafauna.
• Temporal richness studies: Enables investigation of changes in megafauna genus richness over time.
• Climate–biodiversity correlation: Supports correlation of fossil records with paleoclimate indices over the past 180,000 years to investigate climate–biodiversity relationships.
• Historical biodiversity and ecological dynamics: Enables analyses aimed at understanding historical biodiversity and ecological dynamics in Sahul.

Methodology:

Compiled and standardized fossil ages from the literature (original compilation up to 2013; FosSahul 2.0 updated to include publications up to 2018 totaling 11,871 dated records), retained detailed methodological metadata for each record, and developed and integrated an algorithm to automate the quality-rating of fossil entries.