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Paleobotany

The Compendium Index of North American
Mesozoic and Cenozoic Type Fossil Plants

Electronic Compendium Index - v.1.0 (current release), v.0.0beta

Identifying even a single fossil flora is a painstaking process that can take months or years of research time. To determine the correct name of the fossil plant, a researcher must pour over many highly dissimilar and often hard to find publications. In 1937 the late Princeton University paleobotanist, Erling Dorf, decided to tackle the problem of dispersal and availability by compiling the Compendium Index of North American Mesozoic and Cenozoic Type Fossil Plants.

Back and front of a card from the Index
This sample record from the Compendium Index shows the card layout and the fields into which it is organized. Each 8" x 10" card has an illustration and a description of a fossil plant species pasted on the front (on right, above) and reverse (on left), respectively. The front of the card also has the species name, its geological age, the formation and locality where it occurs, its status, and the citation of the reference where it was published.
This one-of-a-kind card catalog contains illustrations and descriptions of fossil plant species. Dorf greatly facilitated the identification of fossil plants by arranging these cards into a unique set of numbered morphological categories (based on variables such as leaf shape and major venation type) that grouped like forms with one another regardless of their professed taxonomic assignments. During his lifetime Dorf was able to assemble over 10,000 cards from 140 paleobotanical references.

After Dorf’s death the Compendium Index was transferred to the Yale Peabody Museum’s Division of Paleobotany. Since its acquisition in 1984 the Compendium Index has been substantially updated and reorganized. It presently covers fossil floras from North America, including Greenland, starting in the Triassic Period (240 million years ago) and extending to the Pleistocene or Ice Age, which ended about 10,000 years ago. Over 93 references have been added in the last 20 years, and the Compendium Index has grown from 10,000 cards to approximately 20,000 cards, with 9,881 entries from 235 references dating from 1866 to 2003. The Compendium Index is an invaluable resource that exists only at the Yale Peabody Museum.

The Yale Peabody Museum’s collections are available to legitimate researchers for scholarly use. Loans are issued to responsible individuals at established institutions. Loans and access to the collection can be arranged through the Collections Manager.

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