I was searching for certain extinct species of snakes like Gigantofis or Titanoboa. Both seem to be missing here. But then T-Rex is present, meaning it is not the case that extinct animals are missing. So why are those snakes missing from the database?
Copying this from the Curator Guide, but it boils down to it being a waste of curatorās time to add extinct species given the purpose of iNaturalist:
Extinct Taxa
iNaturalist is about observing living things so maintaining extinct clades in the taxonomy is not a curation priority. However, Extinct clades are tolerated provided:
-
They fit into the taxonomic backbone - e.g. the Passenger Pigeon belongs to the extinct genus Ectopistes which nests neatly within the extant family Columbidae. But accommodating the extinct āmammal-like reptilesā would require changing the backbone by inserting new nodes between the existing Subphylum Vertebrate and Class Mammal nodes or breaking up traditional (but non-monophyletic) basal groups used by Catalog of Life and GBIF such as reptiles. We prioritize taxonomic backbones that match external references over ones that can accommodate extinct groups.
-
The extinct nodes and all of its descendants are marked as Extinct by adding Extinct conservation statuses. Since this is a lot of work, curators may prefer to rather ungraft or inactivate extinct clades rather than do the work involved in marking the entire clade as extinct. If you care strongly about including an extinct clade, be prepared to do this work yourself.
8 Likes
Hmm makes sense. Thanks a lot!
It is worth noting that many species are also just missing in general. A lot of extant species are also unlikely to ever be recorded on iNat so adding them and maintaining them just generates extra work too. Some people like to go to natural history museums and make slightly-less-than-serious (or perhaps poorly aware of site guidelines) observations the big front hall T-rexes so that taxon actually sees a fair bit of use compared to many others. Fossil species with much poorer fossil records, less prominent displays and less public awareness are much less likely to generate that kind of ādemandā.
4 Likes
Iād like to add, though, that adding rare extant species can be really helpful to researchers. Iām an agrostologist and have added and used some really rare species in the past. However, long-extinct species like Titanoboa arenāt very useful to researchers looking for living species, which is really what iNat is designed for. Recently extinct species (i.e. those extinct in the last 50 years) could be useful.
4 Likes
Agrostology (from Greek į¼Ī³ĻĻĻĻĪ¹Ļ agrÅstis type of grass + Ī»ĪæĪ³ĪÆĪ± logia), is the scientific study of grasses
1 Like
The same thing happened to me! IT issues aside, I was able to spot a nesting pair of G. californianus in Glen Park with all the requisite advanced geo-location techniques, even with the most advanced satellite intelligence, yet the I-Nat app doesnāt allow that! I swear I saw them with my own eyes! They were documented relatively recently by no less an authority than Archie Menzies, on the Vancouver Expedition I believe. Fossil evidence alsoā¦
Jokes aside, what does one do with actual observations of extinct taxa with real-time observational data? Such as diatoms in chert, or other real-time verifiable data such as from pollen analysis in bore samples, petrified forests and so on? That data is useful too. Reconstructions of what the flora in Siberia may have looked like during the time of Woolly Mammoths, for which evidence is available, would be border-line useful. Speculations about what Las Vegas looked like during the Devonian would probably not be very useful, except perhaps as an overlay. To construct a database sufficient to encompass the entire evolutionary history of the universe over the last 5 billion years or so would be an exhaustive task, larger than Google Earth, or even the IRS, and probably lead to entropy at a universal scale (worse than mining bitcoin). Tracking hummingbird migration patterns at a very fine-grained level, on the other hand, would be very usefulā¦
Data like
can definitely be valuable but arenāt the focus of iNat. They can be posted, though staff donāt encourage this. There arenāt necessarily going to be specific taxa available for them to be IDed to, and IDers will generally downvote the āRecent evidence of organismā in the DQA making them Casual.
2 Likes
You might discuss this with a local museum or researcher who can post them on their own website or one of the other big national or international ones.
1 Like