Adding Taxa to PaleoDB

Adding taxon names

1. Go to paleodb.org
2. Login (link at the upper right corner of the startup window). If you are not registered as a contributor, you should specify your supervisor (e.g., Paula or Wasila) as the authorizer, and your name (lastname, first initial, followed by period e.g., Midford, P.) as enterer. This will take you to the Main Menu.
3. The first step is to double check that the taxon is not in PaleoDB. Every (chordate) taxon in PaleoDB should be in VTO, but there may be a few that have been added since the last time the VTO was updated from the PaleoDB. In the ‘Data entry’ column under the heading ‘Basic steps’, click the ‘Add/edit taxon name’ link. This will take you to a page called ‘Enter the taxon’s full name’. Enter the name in the Taxon name field (e.g., Loganellia scotica) and click Search.
   • If a match is found, then we don’t need to worry about it and when we add PBDB to the VTO the name should appear in Phenex. If the name is already in PBDB, then we don't need to worry unless the containing taxa are not listed in PBDB. If there are no containing taxa, the VTO update process will attach taxon directly under chordata (which is the default root in our VTO build scripts).
   • If a match is not found, then the Reference search page will appear. The reference to search for is the paper that you are curating (not the publication where the taxon was originally described!) You can search by simply entering the author and PBDB to make sure the reference isn’t already there. You don’t need to specify year or title in the search, but if the author has lots of publications already in the database, adding one of this will shorten the list of returned results. Click Search. The resulting page will display a list of matches.
4. If there is no match for the publication, click on the ‘Main menu’ item in the upper left. To record a new reference, click the ‘Add new reference’ in the ‘Basic steps’ area. This will take you to a Duplicate reference search page. Enter the name as on the Reference search page and hit the ‘Search’ button. When the list of references add, click the ‘Add’ button (since the reference shouldn’t be in this list). This will take you to the ‘New reference form’ page.