I realize curators are advised to try not to add extinct species such as dinosaurs, but there’s a caveat that this is due to having to rework taxonomic frameworks. Assuming the framework is already in place (and it at least partly appears to be for most dinosaurs) what authority should be used for creating new names for the site? At the moment there are a number of dinosaur fossils that are just named to family, even though they’re in museums with labels and the posters know what they are.
I personally didn’t see the point in making posts about prehistoric organisms. Last time I checked, this was to help with biodiversity research by providing information on ranges and numbers of living organisms. The only exceptions I can think of would be for organisms that are still alive today like horseshoe crabs.
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This is where Linnean taxonomy and cladistics clash, because of course all of our bird observations would count as dinosaur observations in cladistics. But iNaturalist classifies it as Class Dinosauria, following a more Linnean approach.
I am a teacher and I personally like to upload prehistoric organisms (such as this post) to show students that extinct species also fit in our taxonomic frameworks. It helps me organize my photos, find pictures quickly, and it geotags different sites as well.
I did a dinosaur dig with my graduate university this summer and didn’t upload any specimens, because I didn’t want to reveal the coordinates of the digsite. So it’s not always appropriate.
If the goal of iNaturalist is connect people with nature across space (by looking at maps and geotags), I don’t know why it can’t also help connect people to nature across time (even deep time).
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This is slightly off-topic, but I think the current prejudice against extinct organisms on iNaturalist may be a bit short-sighted. The work on them is little different from work on living organisms. All the same methods are used when it comes to taxonomy - there are type specimens, naming conventions must be followed, etc. People still discover extinct organisms in the wild and it serves the same purpose to ID them as it does a random bird or wildflower. And server space certainly isn’t the issue. There are millions of junk observations of living taxa now.
Not a fan of cladistics, btw (iNaturalist only selectively uses cladistics anyway, mostly relying on traditional Linnaean taxonomy). Cladists always just presume they are correct all the time, but they can never seem to get their own trees to agree with each other in the same paper.
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I read this thread and these are all things I already knew. I know full well these will revert to casual. The concern about poaching is the same as with endangered species and people should observe the same protocol. Yet another similarity with living taxa. This doesn’t answer my original question. People do still upload dinosaur observations and someone is adding new names.
The current “framework” is a completely botched version of an older system. I personally think we shouldn’t have any long-extinct groups on INat as it clutters the system and is not the intended purpose. I do agree though that there should be a similar website for fossils as it could be quite helpful for research.
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I agree that new names shouldn’t be added and we shouldn’t worry about a framework for this. It’s not a good use of curator or staff time. Staff have been very clear that iNat isn’t intended to support fossil observations, so we shouldn’t be devoting resources to make the platform more amenable to that.
On a related note, users shouldn’t be encouraged to make observations of fossils or similar in museums - really not what iNat is for.
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Yes, Dinosaurs are the authority.
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The same can be said about other museum collections. Yet every time someone asks about an insect collection or what not, the replies imply that it’s okay if it’s marked captive, or the date and place of collection are used, or similar advice designed to get around this inconvenience. The Forum seems to be sending mixed messages to appease people, and I think it would be better to unify the message, even if some are disappointed.
I think iNaturalist and Forum responses from iNaturalist staff have been very clear and consistent, that iNaturalist is intended for personal observations of wild organisms.
Observations of captive/cultivated organisms, museum specimens, and fossils are all consistently discouraged (and therefore not fully supported by the infrastructure of iNaturalist), but are also not strictly prohibited. They are tolerated when not excessive, but iNaturalist is not likely to spend special development time or resources for them.
Discussions around what DQA parameters apply, etc., when such observations are posted should not be taken as tacit encouragment to post such observations.
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At least in terms of museum specimens/collections for insects, there is a LOT of biodiversity that isn’t on iNaturalist (or anywhere else) except for specimens from collections. You can supplement what is actually out there but hasn’t been photographed in the wild with vouchers from collections. Sort of placeholders… I’d love to get some in-situ photos of some of my cicadas or a few of the weirder buprestids I’ve posted, but until and unless someone manages it it’s good to have the specimen photos as a resource.
Furthermore, there are a lot of cases where there are no field guides for certain insects. 99.99% of people have no access to museum collections, so have representative material may be the only way for them to have a reference to try and identify something.
Of course I’m biased since I have a bunch of insect specimen photos on here. My two cents on that one.
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Alright, I guess the staff has spoken.
Personally I agree that these and a lot of other good reasons discussed on this forum support continued leniency on the part of iNaturalist when it comes to these kinds of observations. Just like captive/cultivated observations are tolerated because they are often someone’s first (if not only) encounters with nature.
But is iNaturalist the place to post photographic documentation of a museum’s entire holdings, or of a botanical garden’s complete accessions? They say no, and I agree there too. That is completely beyond its mission.
Although it’s great to have as many of the world’s species as possible represented on iNaturalist, I’m pretty sure that their mission doesn’t include being the premier global field guide and taxonomic resource.
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I suppose if enough paleontologists and hobbyists with a strong interest in fossils got together on iNat, they could push for including fossil organisms and their taxonomies as acceptable records on the site. Fossils are after all evidence of organisms. Not that I’m advocating for their full-fledged inclusion.
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To answer the original question, there isn’t an external authority selected by iNaturalist for dinosaurs. If anyone wants to add dinosaur taxa they can do that, but I don’t think any time or energy should be spent debating or discussing this on a flag or something. Fossils are not a primary concern for iNaturalist, as has been acknowledged a few times here.
I think from our perspective, adding a lot of support for fossil data is similar to adding support for other types of important and valuable nature-related data: it would be feature/mission creep and it’s not what we want iNat to be for. Gathering weather data, litter data, geological data, fossil data, water quality data - those are all important and are ways people engage with nature, but iNat isn’t for that. IMO it’s much better to focus on being good at one thing (extant organisms) than to try and be a giant site for all of those and be mediocre at all of them. If there’s a large enough group of people who want specific fossil/dinosaur support, I think they should make their own site. They’re more than welcome to use iNat’s open source code as a starting point.
As for museum specimens, iNat isn’t meant to be a repository for data generated elsewhere, so if someone is sitting on a bunch of old museum specimens, it would be best to add those to sites dedicated to that already, like IDigBio or VertNet, that are designed specifically for those kinds of records. If you have your own collection of insects you’ve collected, that’s more appropriate for iNat.
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Pleas understand that I am completely content to leave fossils in the “tolerated” category but I don’t know that it’s proper logically to lump fossils with non-biological phenomena.
Fossils have scientific names and are evidence of actual organisms. None of the others you mentioned are at all biologically relevant and hardly seem worth comparing to fossils.
I don’t really don’t see how fossils are any less aligned with how iNaturalist works than observations of bones, feathers, or footprints. I’m having even more difficulty comprehending how including fossils would make iNaturalist “mediocre”. iNat already has fossils
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/fossils-of-the-world
And many of them are observations of personally collected specimens, not museum collections.
I monitor daily the mollusks posted to the SE coast of the US and fossil seashells wash up on the beach from time to time. I don’t mind marking them as casual, but I don’t see why I should discourage people from posting fossil shells. The shelling community is just as capable and interested in IDing these extinct mollusks as any other seashell. They look the same, are found the same way, and can be identified to species.
It doesn’t seem fair to compare fossils to weather phenomena.
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In very many cases, the insect collections posted were collected by the observer. Although the insects were photo’d after they were dead and pinned, the observation is a record of an interaction with an organism observed in the wild. These observations are just an extension of photos of live insects. These are clearly acceptable.
Photos of museum specimens usually do not record the observer’s experience with the organism in the wild. These represent a whole different interaction. A small number of such observations are tolerated but in general there are better routes for getting this information out to researchers, e.g. through Symbiota.
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I would expand this slightly by saying not even every aspect of extant organisms should be within scope. There have been many forum threads that seem to be pushing for the demarginalization of edge uses that are better covered elsewhere, such as cultivated plants or herbarium specimens.
These were what I was referring to with the insect collections. I also recall a thread about an inherited shell collection, which also does not represent the heir’s experience with the organism in the wild – and may not even represent the original owner’s experience, if (some of) the shells were purchased. I have some Babylon snail shells saved from a restaurant meal, but as much as I would love to add that species to my iNat life list, I didn’t interact with them except at the restaurant; therefore, I don’t upload them.
It seems just about any case of feature/mission creep can be rationalized as related in some way to someone conneting with nature. People really seem to want iNat to be all things to all people.
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