What is NEPTUNE-oline II ?

 

NEPTUNE-online II is the successor of the former NEPTUNE-online server and represents a collection of updated and standardized, chronostratigraphic datums including first- and last appearance datums of planktonic microfossils, magnetic polarity reversals, and stable isotope datums reported in the initial and scientific reports of the DSDP and ODP. All listed datums were magnetically converted and follow the integrated geochronology of Berggren et al. (1995).

 

NEPTUNE-online II includes microfossils like calcareous nannofossils, planktic foraminifera, diatoms, radiolarians, bolboforma, d18O isotope stages Sr isotopes, and, where available from radiometric ages read from the initial and scientific reports of the DSDP and ODP up to Leg 199. Most of the age models cover the Cenozoic, but there is was an increasing number of Mesozoic datums added as well.

 

This biostratigraphic synthesis emerged from the continued effort of biostratigraphic data compilation from DSDP and ODP reports, that was initiated in 1990 by the micropaleontology group at ETH in Zürich, Switzerland, and continued later by workers at the Natural History Museum in Basel (see History). Until 2004, the NEPTUNE-online server resided at ETH in Zürich, where it was designed as a dual system consisting of an on-line relational database (NEPTUNE) and a numerical age model and data collection. The database solution was embedded in a "4th Dimension (4D)" environment and allowed access to over 8000 species entries of planktonic microfossils for synonymy checks. The numerical age model collection included stratigraphic data from over 600 holes of the DSDP and ODP, that could be downloaded.

 

These models were constructed using the interactive graphical tool Age Depth Plot (ADP) and dating tool Age Maker (AM) written by Dave Lazarus, and which can also be downloaded. The templets used to generate the age models represent a global synthesis of available micropaleontological events scattered in the DSDP and ODP reports, standardized to the Berggren et al. (1995) time scale. They are also available for download.

 

The NEPTUNE-online server at ETH is no longer available, although parts of the installation was incorporated into the Chronos stratigraphic information facility. By 2013 and through the continued efforts of Dave Lazarus at the MRC Berlin and his colleagues much of the information was transferred to the Neptune Deep-Sea Microfossil Occurrence Database, now accessible from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). Nevertheless, and despite integration into Chronos, much useful information and software is no longer available since the close-down of NEPTUNE-online at the ETH server.

 

In order to make templets, core-data, age models, and age modeling software further available to earth scientists, the age model collection of the former NEPTUNE-online server was re-uploaded in 2005 as NEPTUNE-online II on this server in Basel. Since then, selected - limited in number - DSDP and ODP age models were added in the framework of own research.

 

For a historical review of NEPTUNE, its follow-up products and further development until 2020 refer to Renaudie, Lazarus and Diver (2020).