About Ammonitopedia

To build a database containing 'all' the described ammonite species. The idea is that when one is looking for information about a species, he just has to browse a single website as the starting point of his research. When leaving, he should have got general information about the species from the ammonitopedia website and know which paper publications to read to get further detailed information.

The content is freely accessible to everyone. There are several ways to browse the database:

• if you are looking for a genus or a species you know the name of, type the first letters in the search bar present at the top of every page to get suggestions;
• if you are looking for species from a given stage, go to the geologic scale page and click on the stage of your choice;
• if you want to do advanced search (by subzone, family, etc.) or multi-criteria search, you can use the search engine;
• if you are a regular user, you can browse the recent additions page to see new species that have been added since your last visit;
• You can also view the species of the database displayed on an interactive map of the world. Use the filters on the left menu to refine your search. Please note that this functionality is still in beta-test mode.

Ammonitopedia.com is a 'User generated content' website. Everyone who wants to help and think he has the required ammonite related knowledge can contribute. The 'How can I contribute?' paragraph on this page explains how simple it is. The idea is that if everyone adds a few (local or not) species that he knows well, we could 'quickly' obtain a very useful database.

No, you don't. Only ammonites related knowledge is required. All the interactions with the database are made through forms to fill.

You can help consolidating the database in various ways :

• by adding new species to the database. To add a species, just fill the fields of the species description form and submit it. That's how simple it is!
• by consolidating existing entries. Visit this page to see the list of entries which should be completed;
• by reviewing recent edition. Visit this page to see the list of recently edited entries;
• by translating entries. Visit this page to see the list of entries which should be translated into English.

I am an ammonite enthusiast who is also passionate about IT. As I always dreamt of a database which would aggregate data about virtually all the ammonite species, I decided to start developing the Ammonitopedia project.

I have been designing and developing the Ammonitopedia website and the underlying database on my own. Even if the content of the website is generated by the users, the underlying technical aspects represent a lot of work and I am currently the only one handling it. This is not my job and I am developing this project on my spare-time. Therefore, some bugs are likely to be found. If you find one, please feel free to send a bug report.

Improvements and new features are released on a more or less regular basis when I have the time to work on the project.

Some functionalities might not be working on every single devices and browsers that exists. In particular, this website is designed to display well on screens as small as the iPhone 5 screen (i.e. 320px by 568px). Nothing is guaranteed under this size. Old versions of Internet Explorer are also not supported.

As an ammonite enthusiast or a paleontologist, you regularly have to identify some of your specimens and thus need documentation. This documentation is sometimes difficult to find, and you don't necessarily know in which document your ammonite could be described.

From this observation came the idea of a database gathering all the described ammonite species. The idea is that when one need information about a genus or a species, a stage or a zone, a locality or any other criteria, he just has to browse one database instead of a lot of documentation. Another advantage of a digital database over paper publications is that it can be updated and the modifications are instantly available to anyone browsing it. This can be useful in the case of a genus revision for example.

As populating such a database is way too much work for a single person, the project had to be collaborative. That is the reason why the Ammonitopedia website has been developed: to let the database be easily accessible to everyone, and for everyone to be able to contribute by adding new entries or completing existing ones.

This project does not aim to replace the scientific paper publications. Instead, it aims to list for each species described in the database all the paper publications dealing with that species. This way, one can get general information about a species from the Ammonitopedia website, plus a list of publications to read to get further detailed information.