Table 1.

Major marine components of the Paleobiology Database

Category	Key information	Collections (%)
Primary spatial data	Country	8,588 (>99.9)
Secondary spatial data	County or latitude/longitude	7,077 (82.4)
Temporal data	Resolved to our 10-Myr bins	7,029 (81.8)
Lithostratigraphy	Formation	7,324 (85.3)
Lithology	Primary lithology (e.g., “packstone”)	7,913 (92.1)
Local stratigraphic control	Position in a measured section	2,707 (31.5)
Depositional environment	Principal facies (e.g., “prodelta”)	5,450 (63.4)
Preservation	Type of fossil (e.g., “original aragonite”)	5,663 (65.9)
Collection/preparation	Methods (e.g., “peel or thin section”)	5,097 (59.3)
Taxonomic list	Genus names	8,357 (97.3)
Abundance data	Counts of specimens or individuals	3,071 (35.7)

“Collections (%)” reports the number and proportion of the 8591 fossil collection records in the database including at least one item of “Key Information.” Categories in bold are used in the analyses reported here. Most categories include multiple distinct data fields. For example, the lithology category includes fields for adjectives describing the lithology, the degree of lithification, the primary and secondary lithology types, and a verbal description of the facies.