Section: Paleontology
Topic: Paleontology

The Morrison Formation Sauropod Consensus: A freely accessible online spreadsheet of collected sauropod specimens, their housing institutions, contents, references, localities, and other potentially useful information

Tschopp, Emanuel1, 2, 3  ; Whitlock, John A.4, 5 ; Woodruff, D. Cary6, 7, 8; Foster, John R.9 ; Lei, Roberto10; Giovanardi, Simone11 
1 Department of Vertebrate Paleontology, American Museum of Natural History, New York, USA
2 GeoBioTec, NOVA School of Science and Technology, Caparica, Portugal
3 MIN Fakultät, Universität Hamburg, Germany
4 Biology Department, Mt. Aloysius College – Cresson, Pennsylvania, USA
5 Section of Vertebrate Paleontology, Carnegie Museum – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
6 Great Plains Dinosaur Museum & Field Station – Malta, Montana, USA
7 Royal Ontario Museum – Toronto, Ontario, Canada
8 University of Toronto – Toronto, Ontario, Canada
9 Utah Field House of Natural History State Park Museum – Vernal, Utah, USA
10 Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia – Modena, Italy
11 Massey University – Auckland, New Zealand

Corresponding author(s): Tschopp, Emanuel (emanuel.tschopp@uni-hamburg.de)

10.24072/pcjournal.100 - Peer Community Journal, Volume 2 (2022), article no. e17.

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The Morrison Formation has been explored for dinosaurs for more than 150 years, often specifically for large sauropod skeletons curators wanted to mount as attractions in their museum exhibits around the world. Several long-term campaigns to the Jurassic West of the United States produced hundreds of specimens, ranging from isolated, fragmentary bones to nearly complete skeletons of these enormous herbivorous animals. Given the sheer number of specimens, keeping track of what is housed in which institution is paramount to study variability, taxonomy, and consequently geographic and temporal distribution of the various species and genera recognized from the Morrison Formation. In an attempt to facilitate these studies, we have compiled an online spreadsheet intended to combine all the available information on sauropod specimens from collection databases, published literature, and personal observations. These include lists of contents of the specimens, in what institution the material is housed, references mentioning, describing, figuring, providing measurements and/or 3D scans, locality data and stratigraphy, as well as other potentially useful data for research purposes. The spreadsheet is openly accessible, but editing is currently restricted to the authors of this study, in order to ensure high-quality data curation to keep the file as useful as possible.

Published online:
DOI: 10.24072/pcjournal.100
Type: Software tool

Tschopp, Emanuel 1, 2, 3; Whitlock, John A. 4, 5; Woodruff, D. Cary 6, 7, 8; Foster, John R. 9; Lei, Roberto 10; Giovanardi, Simone 11

1 Department of Vertebrate Paleontology, American Museum of Natural History, New York, USA
2 GeoBioTec, NOVA School of Science and Technology, Caparica, Portugal
3 MIN Fakultät, Universität Hamburg, Germany
4 Biology Department, Mt. Aloysius College – Cresson, Pennsylvania, USA
5 Section of Vertebrate Paleontology, Carnegie Museum – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
6 Great Plains Dinosaur Museum & Field Station – Malta, Montana, USA
7 Royal Ontario Museum – Toronto, Ontario, Canada
8 University of Toronto – Toronto, Ontario, Canada
9 Utah Field House of Natural History State Park Museum – Vernal, Utah, USA
10 Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia – Modena, Italy
11 Massey University – Auckland, New Zealand
License: CC-BY 4.0
Copyrights: The authors retain unrestricted copyrights and publishing rights 
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Tschopp, Emanuel; Whitlock, John A.; Woodruff, D. Cary; Foster, John R.; Lei, Roberto; Giovanardi, Simone. The Morrison Formation Sauropod Consensus: A freely accessible online spreadsheet of collected sauropod specimens, their housing institutions, contents, references, localities, and other potentially useful information. Peer Community Journal, Volume 2 (2022), article  no. e17. doi : 10.24072/pcjournal.100. https://peercommunityjournal.org/articles/10.24072/pcjournal.100/

PCI peer reviews and recommendation, and links to data, scripts, code and supplementary information: 10.24072/pci.paleo.100003

Conflict of interest of the recommender and peer reviewers:
The recommender in charge of the evaluation of the article and the reviewers declared that they have no conflict of interest (as defined in the code of conduct of PCI) with the authors or with the content of the article.

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