Updated chronologies for North American small mammal fossil localities in the Neotoma Paleoecology Database

TL;DR

This paper updates the Neotoma database with new calibrated radiocarbon dates for North American small mammal fossils, improving accuracy for studying past ecological communities.

Contribution

The study provides newly added and calibrated radiocarbon dates for 1553 fossil collections in the Neotoma database.

Findings

2074 new radiocarbon dates were added to the Neotoma database.

Calibrated chronologies now cover more sites and include more dates than previously available.

The updated database provides age estimates in calendar years for better integration with other data.

Abstract

Community paleoecology is a powerful approach for analyzing ecological communities during long-term climate shifts like the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, but it depends on accurate estimates of species co-occurrences. The Neotoma Paleoecology Database is an open paleodata resource that stores assemblage-level taxonomic, spatial, and temporal information for Quaternary fossil localities. However, its age estimates for many vertebrate fossil localities are based on uncalibrated radiocarbon dates, hindering comparisons with other paleoenvironmental proxies. In order to provide consistent and updated age inferences suitable for broad-scale paleoecological studies, we have reassessed the radiocarbon chronologies for all 14C-dated North American small mammal collections in Neotoma. Here we present the resulting database update, including 2074 radiocarbon dates newly added to Neotoma and new calibrated radiocarbon chronologies for 1553 fossil collections. The new chronologies cover more sites and include more dates than the chronologies previously available in Neotoma. They also provide fossil assemblage age estimates in calendar years, facilitating integration with other data sources. We anticipate that these updates will be useful for various applications in community paleoecology.

Figures