Fossils for Future: the billion-dollar case for paleontology’s digital infrastructure

This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 1 of this Preprint. You must log in to post a comment. There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article. This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 1 of this Preprint. Add a Comment You must log in to post a comment. Comments There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article. The digital revolution has transformed paleontology through the development of open-access, community-driven databases that underpin some of the most impactful research in biodiversity, climate change, and extinction dynamics. These systems safeguard high-effort, volunteered data and have revealed major macroevolutionary patterns, including mass extinctions. However, of 118 paleontological and Earth science databases reviewed, 95% had lifespans under 15 years, putting decades of investment at risk. As paleontological data infrastructures enter a third generation—marked by modular design, improved data provenance, and cross-platform integration—there is growing potential to support multi-scalar, interdisciplinary research across Earth and Life sciences. We advocate for strategies to enhance database longevity, including sustained funding models, stronger institutional support, and modular backend architectures that better link international community databases to each other and to fossil specimens. https://doi.org/10.32942/X2DS89 Arts and Humanities, Bioinformatics, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Arts and Humanities, Physical Sciences and Mathematics data equity, big data, sustainable development, palaeontology, Data infrastructure, funding landscape Published: 2025-09-10 17:32 Last Updated: 2025-09-10 17:32 CC BY Attribution 4.0 International Conflict of interest statement: I declare no conflicts. Data and Code Availability Statement: Code and data are available publicly here: https://github.com/dowdingem/IRAL Language: English