QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH TRENDS IN PALAEOBIOLOGY AND STRATIGRAPHY——CONSTRUCTION OF THE GEOBIODIVERSITY DATABASE(GBDB)USING ESCIENCE TECHNOLOGY

Since the late 1980's,database techniques and related methods of mass data storage and quantitative analysis have been applied widely to various geological studies including palaeobiology,strati-graphy,palaeogeography,palaeoclimatology and palaeoecology.The development in China of a palaeobiology and stratigraphy database was initi-ated in Nanjing in 2003 and by 2007 had evolved into a more comprehensive project-with the aim of developing useful tools for quantitative researches in these subject areas with state-of-the-art eScience technology.Its goal is to facilitate regional and global scientific collaborations focused on studying the history,diversity,geography and environmental context of life on Earth.The present database is constructed through the GeoBiodiversity database(GBDB)platform,with the integration of abundant data sources of systematic palaeontology,palaeogeography,lithostratigraphy,fossil occurrences,biostratigraphy and bibliography,and provides public access.It is not a collection based database like PaleoDB(the Paleobiology Database),but a section-based database,and therefore provides the possibility to conduct various stratigraphic analysis.Two visualization tools for geographic and stratigraphic data mining and three primary data tools for analysis of paleodiversity,and for quantitative stratigraphic correlation and paleogeographic reconstruction are available in the current version.