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Field Guide

Paleontology Collection Data Access
Database Search Guidelines and Criteria

A search that utilizes several fields will produce only those records that satisfy all of the selected conditions. A search utilizing the Global field may produce unexpected results. Numerical searches (locality and specimens numbers) of this field should be avoided. Searches of the Rock unit and Time unit fields will work best using the primary name only (e.g., San Diego rather than San Diego Formation; Ardath rather than Ardath Shale; Eocene rather than Eocene Epoch.

Five of the fields may be searched directly, and in addition there is a global search that searches all fields. You may search more than one field at a time. Multiple-field searches are treated as AND searches, returning only records that match all search criteria.

The search algorithm searches for character strings, and does not accommodate wildcards or operators like AND and OR. Do not use punctuation —like + or quotation marks—to define your search terms. Case is ignored—upper and lower case letters are treated as being alike. You can enter any consecutive string of letters, spaces, and punctuation that might appear in a field. Only an exact match of that string will result in a hit.

Search results are sorted in alphabetical order by family, and then by name. There is no weighting of returns. The full record for each specimen is linked by the number at the left margin of the search results list.

Locality Number field—exact match only

Enter the locality number. This search will retrieve a listing of recovered specimens.

Taxon—any string of characters

Enter a genus or species name. Searches may be on any string, whole or partial or multiple words.

Upper Taxon—any string of characters

Enter a phylum, class, order, or family. Search may be on any string.

Rock Unit—any string of characters

Enter a group, formation, or member. Search may be on any string.

Time Unit—any string of characters

Enter an era, period, epoch, age, or NALMA. Search may be on any string.

Global—any string of characters

A Global search field supports global searches of the collection database by fields listed above, as well as element, type status, country, state, or county. Enter specimen number or skeletal element (e.g., maxilla, M1, shell, test. etc.) or type (e.g., holotype, paratype, hypotype) or country or state or county.