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Rainy Day = Trilobase Fossil Database!


JamieLynn

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It's been a rainy week in Texas and today is no exception....so I am spending the day working on a new thing.....a collection database! @erose Erich gave a great presentation at the last Paleontological Society of Austin zoom meeting on Fossil Collecting - what to do with your collection once you've collected it! I bought the Trilobase software (a download) and am having a great time organizing and entering my collection. It's quite a process....I keep rearranging  how I want things represented!  I've decided to go with date collected.  It's made me be a bit more thorough in my info too, looking up  Order and Family to go with Genus and Species.  It's also made me realize... I have a LOT of fossils....... 

 

So how do you organize/present your collection?

 

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Very cool! It's a great rainy day project. 

 

My own system is fairly bare bones: a simple database with columns for genus/species, age/formation, location/site and provenance (purchased/gifted/collected), and year added. I only do that for the trilobites. The rest (stuff not on display) gets organized physically on sturdy shelving in beer flats with labels. :D Since I take photos of most of my finds and place them on a blog with all that info (or when I post fossil trips here on TFF), I can track the taxonomy or location to the photos. 

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...How to Philosophize with a Hammer

 

 

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Yes, I started out with just pics with the info including location and formation (for most, anyways...some didn't get that info and it's tricky to retroactively find them!).  I do like that Trilobase has a print function of making labels with the picture and the info so that I can keep a hard copy folder of them all too. 

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I have a spreadsheet on Google Sheets which is also shared with others (in case the unexpected happens to me) with the following headings:

ID HEX MyFossil ID Description Other Species Location State County City Lat Long Age Formation Member Date Collected Collector Condition Notes Location Notes

Drawer

 

 

Each specimen gets marked with a unique ID using the Paraloid B72 sandwich method and specimens are stored in wood and glass insect drawers. I also take pictures and post them onto MyFOSSIL.org, which also has a handy taxonomy wizard that will fill in all of the higher taxa automatically if you enter the known genus or species. Its also then viewable by anyone. I did a presentation for our own paleo club, I can share the Google Slides presentation with you if you're interested.

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1 hour ago, Crusty_Crab said:

I did a presentation for our own paleo club, I can share the Google Slides presentation with you if you're interested.

Yes! please share.

 

Here is a link to the one I did for the Paleontological Society of Austin Fossil Collecting 101 - Part 2 Making a Collection:  https://austinpaleo.org/papers.html

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So my collection is mostly organized by collecting location. I have various types of boxes filled with ziplock bags that hold specimens with labels.  I also use clear plastic divider boxes for some material and have started using gem jars for my smaller items.  I do have some material such as my Albian crustaceans and echinoderms sorted into small plastic boxes and gem jars.

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I organize mine with Trilobase as well. I fill out as much info as I can to keep track of everything .

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19 minutes ago, erose said:

Yes! please share.

 

Here is a link to the one I did for the Paleontological Society of Austin Fossil Collecting 101 - Part 2 Making a Collection:  https://austinpaleo.org/papers.html

Thats a great resource for some good information. We've been considering doing an online repository for papers and videos of lectures. I'm in the process of writing up my presentation in text format, so there's only the slides for now. Please PM me with your email and I can share it via Google Slides. If anyone else is interested, they may PM me as well. 

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I use Trilobase as well. But I still have so many fossils I need to add to it.

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Olof Moleman AKA Lord Trilobite

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Very important task with any collection.  Good that you are doing that.

My entire collection is on several excel worksheets that contain all of the pertinent information for each fossil and a unique catalog number.  A description label with that number is then created which resides near the specimen.   I have also reviewed this database with my wife should anything happen to me.

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I have been using Trilobase for some time also.  Went on a tear two years ago.  Organized my collection out on the basement floor and began painting little white spots on the specimens and then put numbers on each specimen and then photographed each specimen.  That was just for starters, then put the specimen's information into Trilobase.  Believe that was ALOT of time invested in that project.  Good I'm retired.  I like Trilobase quite alot.  However, there is one aspect that is missing, there is no good way of entering the Geologic Formation.  If any of you Trilobase users have found a way to enter the Geologic Formation into this database, please let me know.

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On 5/1/2021 at 4:09 PM, Crusty_Crab said:

Thats a great resource for some good information. We've been considering doing an online repository for papers and videos of lectures. I'm in the process of writing up my presentation in text format, so there's only the slides for now. Please PM me with your email and I can share it via Google Slides. If anyone else is interested, they may PM me as well. 

Finally looked through your presentation an Google Slides. Nice work. 

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I'm a TriloBase user, but only started five years after I retired (life got in the way!). I love the program and have been using the paper notes I accumulated over 50+ years of collecting into the database. I wish he hadn't taken the slideshow function out of the latest version....

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