Skip to main content

DinoBase Launch


So I am managing an online resource called DinoBase. DinoBase was set up by Mike Benton of University of Bristol about 7 years ago, but had recently undergone a complete make-over. While the old DinoBase used to be literaly tens and hundreds of html pages, the new DinoBase features a dynamic system. It's pretty much a relational database, where all the different categories of information (e.g. genus, location, reference, etc.) are stored in separate tables but link to other tables. This enables data entry to become very quick and easy.

As far as the user is concerned, the information on these individual tables are pulled out and compiled onto a single page, just like any webpage, only that that particular page doesn't exist online as an individual page. So type in a dinosaur genus, species, year of description or author, click on the one you want to view and all the relevant information about that dinosaur will be presented in a single page. This, I think is a very cool system.

DinoBase also has features aside from the database itself. The forum is the newest addition to DinoBase which has quickly become promising. This takes up quite a bit of my energy as I always am on the look out for new dinosaurs to post under the 'Recent Discoveries' Forum or dinosaur-related news to introduce.

Just yesterday, we had a media-event (which I'm not really sure how much the media actually picked up on) where we invited children to explore DinoBase, work on some activity sheets downloadable from the site, look at some cool casts of dinosaur bones, or have a chat with Bristol palaeontologists. So that was the 'Official Launch'. Hopefully, we'll get more attention within the next few days...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The difference between Lion and Tiger skulls

A quick divergence from my usual dinosaurs, and I shall talk about big cats today. This is because to my greatest delight, I had discovered today a wonderful book. It is called The Felidæ of Rancho La Brea (Merriam and Stock 1932, Carnegie Institution of Washington publication, no. 422). As the title suggests it goes into details of felids from the Rancho La Brea, in particular Smilodon californicus (probably synonymous with S. fatalis ), but also the American Cave Lion, Panthera atrox . The book is full of detailed descriptions, numerous measurements and beautiful figures. However, what really got me excited was, in their description and comparative anatomy of P. atrox , Merriam and Stock (1932) provide identification criteria for the Lion and Tiger, a translation of the one devised by the French palaeontologist Marcelin Boule in 1906. I have forever been looking for a set of rules for identifying lions and tigers and ultimately had to come up with a set of my own with a lot of help...
6 comments
Read more

Spinosaurus, the gigantic pangolin of the Cretaceous?

I was made aware of this not long ago - it kind of looks creepy, but it gave me an idea: Did Spinosaurus walk like a pangolin? That is, with it's hands low to the ground but not touching the ground - so no knuckle walking - and maintaining balance as a biped... This pangolin seems to maintain balance on its hind legs even though, on cursory glance, its centre of mass seems too far forward for that. Spinosaurus is supposed to have had a dense femur, so maybe its centre of gravity was farther back than you'd think from overall proportions. Maybe the sail helped tip the scale back? ...or maybe it was a giant ant-eater? Those giant claws look particularly suited to breaking open termite mounds? Who knows. This is me being silly, but thought it was hilarious enough to share...
2 comments
Read more

Top 10 scientifically important theropod dinosaurs of all time (off the top of my head)

I thought I'd do a fun post for once. And since list based articles are the norm for fun on the internet, I thought I'd do one on dinosaurs, but given that I know most about theropods, I've decided to restrict my list to theropods (...maybe in a future post, I'll do other clades). My ranking is based mostly on scientific importance so it may not reflect awesomeness, and it is obviously subjective as to how I rank importance to science. For instance, interesting discoveries or unique palaeobiology are ranked relatively low compared to wealth of information and data or completely revolutionising our understanding of the evolution of theropods. So here are my top 10 scientifically important theropod dinosaurs of all time (off the top of my head) 10. Megalosaurus Being the first dinosaur to be named, Megalosaurus automatically deserves a spot on this list, but given the fragmentary nature of known fossil specimens, and being mostly useless as a meaningful source ...
1 comment
Read more