The impact of the digital trend on ichnology: ICHNOBASE

Since its beginning vertebrate ichnology has based the sharing of data and morphologies on outline drawings and qualitative descriptions of tracks. Though this methods are fundamental for the denition and the understanding of vertebrate tracks, they introduce a high level of subjectivity, due both to the drawing ability and to the sharing methods (e.g. copies from old journals), which do not allow a precise quantitative approach to ichnology, as, e.g., shape analysis. ICHNOBASE aims to create an free open-access online database, containing both invertebrate and vertebrate traces information, bibliographic references, descriptions, updated pictures and 3D models.To ease the cooperation and information retrieval, ICHNOBASE will provide an easy access web interface. Focused on providing quick data input, the database will be able to retrieve bibliographic information and taxonomic data from other information services (e.g. Mendeley, Paleobiology Database, etc.) ICHNOBASE adopts a relational model and includes six main tables: (1) bibliographic references, (2) taxonomic names, (3) taxonomic synonymies, (4) fossil tracks descriptions, pictures and 3D models, (5) sedimentological and stratigraphical characteristics, (6) occurrences. The latter table include also geographic information, allowing a search by locality and spatial statistics. A search API will be provided for promote data integration: data will be distributed using a selfexplaining URL model, meaning that people will be able to type a URL like, e.g., http://www.ichnobase.com/search/megalosauripus to retrieve the description of the track holotype, and with similar web addresses all other information will be made available. Finally, Authors pages, annotations and note sharing will be provided to promote collaboration among researchers.