TY - JOUR
T1 - Inferring the age and environmental characteristics of fossil sites using citizen science
AU - Djokic, Tara
AU - Frese, Michael
AU - Woods, Adam
AU - Dettmann, Mary
AU - Flemons, Paul
AU - Brink, Frank
AU - McCurry, Matthew R
N1 - Funding Information:
We are grateful to the Etheridge family descendants, the Australian Museum Research Institute, and the Australian Museum Trust for funding support. Nigel McGrath kindly provided access to the fossil site. We thank the reviewers of this manuscript, who provided valuable feedback. We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land and waterways on which the McGraths Flat deposit is located, the Wiradjuri Nation People. Lastly, this work would not have been possible without the valuable contributions of volunteer citizen scientists, we recognise and greatly appreciate their time and effort.
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright: © 2023 Djokic et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2023/4/17
Y1 - 2023/4/17
N2 - Not all fossil sites preserve microfossils that can be extracted using acid digestion, which may leave knowledge gaps regarding a site’s age or environmental characteristics. Here we report on a citizen science approach that was developed to identify microfossils in situ on the surface of sedimentary rocks. Samples were collected from McGraths Flat, a recently discovered Miocene rainforest lake deposit located in central New South Wales, Australia. Composed entirely of iron-oxyhydroxide, McGraths Flat rocks cannot be processed using typical microfossil extraction protocols e.g., acid digestion. Instead, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to automatically acquire 25,200 high-resolution images from the surface of three McGraths Flat samples, covering a total area of 1.85 cm
2. The images were published on the citizen science portal DigiVol, through which 271 citizen scientists helped to identify 300 pollen and spores. The microfossil information gained in this study is biostratigraphically relevant and can be used to constrain the environmental characteristics of McGraths Flat. Our findings suggest that automated image acquisition coupled with an evaluation by citizen scientists is an effective method of determining the age and environmental characteristics of fossiliferous rocks that cannot be investigated using traditional methods such as acid digestion.
AB - Not all fossil sites preserve microfossils that can be extracted using acid digestion, which may leave knowledge gaps regarding a site’s age or environmental characteristics. Here we report on a citizen science approach that was developed to identify microfossils in situ on the surface of sedimentary rocks. Samples were collected from McGraths Flat, a recently discovered Miocene rainforest lake deposit located in central New South Wales, Australia. Composed entirely of iron-oxyhydroxide, McGraths Flat rocks cannot be processed using typical microfossil extraction protocols e.g., acid digestion. Instead, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to automatically acquire 25,200 high-resolution images from the surface of three McGraths Flat samples, covering a total area of 1.85 cm
2. The images were published on the citizen science portal DigiVol, through which 271 citizen scientists helped to identify 300 pollen and spores. The microfossil information gained in this study is biostratigraphically relevant and can be used to constrain the environmental characteristics of McGraths Flat. Our findings suggest that automated image acquisition coupled with an evaluation by citizen scientists is an effective method of determining the age and environmental characteristics of fossiliferous rocks that cannot be investigated using traditional methods such as acid digestion.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85152625275&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0284388
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0284388
M3 - Article
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 18
SP - 1
EP - 14
JO - PLoS One
JF - PLoS One
IS - 4 April
M1 - e0284388
ER -