Abstract Detail

Paleobotany

Wilf, Peter [1], Wing, Scott [2], Meyer, Herbert W. [3], Rose, Jacob [4], Saha, Rohit [5], Serre, Thomas [5], Cuneo, N. Ruben [6], Donovan, Michael [7], Erwin, Diane [8], Gandolfo, Maria [9], Gonzalez-Akre, Erika B. [10], Herrera, Fabiany [11], Hu, Shusheng [12], Iglesias, Ari [13], Johnson, Kirk R. [14], Karim, Talia S. [15], Zou, Xiaoyu [1].

An Image Dataset of Cleared, X-Rayed, and Fossil Leaves Vetted to Plant Family for Human and Machine Learning.

Leaves are the most abundant and visible plant organ, both in the modern world and the fossil record. Assigning foliage to the correct plant family based on leaf architecture is a fundamental botanical skill that is critical for identifying isolated fossil leaves, which often, especially in the Cenozoic, represent extinct genera and species from extant families. Resources focused on leaf identification are remarkably scarce; however, the situation has improved due to the recent proliferation of digitized herbarium material, live-plant image libraries and identification apps, and online collections of cleared and fossil leaf images. Nevertheless, the need remains for a specialized image dataset for comparative leaf architecture. We address this need here by assembling an open-access database of ca. 30,300 full-resolution images of vouchered leaf specimens vetted to family level, primarily of angiosperms, including ca. 26,200 cleared and x-rayed leaves from 358 families and ca. 4,100 fossil leaves from 49 families. The images are full resolution, with user-friendly filenames, and vetted using APG or modern paleobotanical standards. The cleared and x-rayed leaves include the Jack A. Wolfe and Leo J. Hickey contributions to the National Cleared Leaf Collection and a collection of high-resolution scanned x-ray negatives (all of these housed in the Division of Paleobotany, Department of Paleobiology, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History), as well as the Daniel Axelrod Cleared Leaf Collection (housed at the University of California Museum of Paleontology, Berkeley). The fossil images include a diverse sampling of Late Cretaceous to Eocene paleobotanical sites from the Western Hemisphere held at numerous institutions, especially from Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument (late Eocene, Colorado), as well as several localities from southern Argentina (Paleocene and Eocene), Colombia (Paleocene), and elsewhere from the Late Cretaceous to Eocene of the Western USA. The dataset will facilitate new research and education opportunities in paleobotany, comparative leaf architecture and systematics, and machine learning.

1 - Pennsylvania State University, Dept. of Geosciences, University Park, PA, 16802, USA
2 - Smithsonian Institution, Dept. Of Paleobiology NHB 121, PO Box 37012, Washington, DC, 20013, United States
3 - Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, National Park Service,, Florissant, CO, 80816, USA
4 - Brown University, School of Engineering, Providence, RI, 02912, USA
5 - Brown University, Department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences, Carney Institute for Brain Science, Providence, RI, 02912, USA
6 - MEF, Av. Fontana 140, Trelew-Chubut, U, 9100, Argentina
7 - Cleveland Museum Of Natural History, Paleobotany And Paleoecology, 1 Wade Oval Drive, Cleveland, 44106, United States
8 - MUSEUM OF PALEONTOLOGY, 1101 Valley Life Sciences Building, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States
9 - Cornell University, L. H. Bailey Hortorium, Plant Biology Section, SIPS, 406 Mann Library Building, Plant Biology Section, Ithaca, NY, 14853, United States
10 - Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, National Zoological Park, Conservation Ecology Center, Front Royal, VA, 22630, USA
11 - Chicago Botanic Garden, 1000 Lake Cook Road, Glencoe, IL, 60022.0, United States
12 - Peabody Museum, 170 Whitney Ave, New Haven, CT, 06511, United States
13 - CONICET-UNComa, Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Ambiente INIBIOMA, San Carlos de Bariloche, Rio Negro, 8400, Argentina
14 - Smithsonian Institution, Dept. of Paleobiology, NHB 121, PO Box 37012, Washington, DC , 20013, United States
15 - University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, Boulder, CO, 80503, USA
16 - Pennsylvania State University, Dept. of Geosciences, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

Keywords:
Angiosperms
Cleared Leaves
Data science
Fossil Leaves
Leaf Architecture.

Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: PL8, Paleobotany: Patterns & Trends
Location: /
Date: Thursday, July 22nd, 2021
Time: 3:45 PM(EDT)
Number: PL8004
Abstract ID:104
Candidate for Awards:None