Fossil Search

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The Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology is a definitive multi-authored work of some 50 volumes, written by more than 300 paleontologists, and covering every phylum, class, order, family, and genus of fossil and extant (still living) invertebrate animals. The descriptions include their taxonomy, morphology, and stratigraphic and paleogeographic range.

The current editor is Bruce S. Lieberman at The Paleontological Institute at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. The online website system was developed in coordination with Dr. Lieberman's team by the Earth History Visualization team of undergraduate computer engineers at Purdue University under the guidance of James Ogg and Aaron Ault. The Treatise publication website is https://journals.ku.edu/InvertebratePaleo.

API Documentation

Search the Treatise fossil dataset through the API. Each phylum is hosted on its own subsite and must be queried independently.

Send a GET request to https://<phylum>.treatise.geolex.org/searchAPI.php, replacing <phylum> with a subsite name.

For example: Brachiopod API or Charophyte API. Calling the endpoint without parameters returns the complete dataset for that subsite.

All query parameters are optional and can be combined.

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
`searchquery`	String	—	Search genus names; partial matches are supported (for example, `Horn` can match `Hornosaurus`).
`classfilter`	String	`All`	Filter by taxonomic class.
`orderfilter`	String	`All`	Filter by taxonomic order.
`subphylumfilter`	String	`All`	Filter by subphylum.
`subclassfilter`	String	`All`	Filter by subclass.
`geographyfilter`	String	`All`	Filter by geographic region (for example, `USA`, `Russia`, or `North America`).
`stagefilter`	String	`All`	Filter by geological stage (for example, `Holocene`). Use the full stage name; partial matching is not supported.
`agefilterstart`	Number	—	Older (larger) age bound in Ma.
`agefilterend`	Number	—	Younger (smaller) age bound in Ma.
`genusOnly`	Boolean	`false`	When `true`, return only the `Genus` field.
`addSynonyms`	Boolean	`false`	When `true`, include the `Synonyms` field in the response.

Age filtering: Results are limited to taxa whose full temporal range falls within the specified interval. agefilterstart must be the larger (older) value and agefilterend the smaller (younger) value.

String filters: Passing All or leaving a filter empty matches all records, including records without a value for that field.

The examples use the brachiopod subsite:

searchAPI.php?searchquery=Sivorthis — find the genus Sivorthis.
searchAPI.php?classfilter=Rhynchonellata&geographyfilter=Europe — filter by class and geography.
searchAPI.php?agefilterstart=100&agefilterend=66 — restrict results to the 100–66 Ma interval.
searchAPI.php?searchquery=Lingula&genusOnly=true&addSynonyms=true — return genus names with populated synonym information.

The API returns JSON with data keyed by genus name. Each genus entry contains the available fields (or only the requested fields):

{
  "data": {
    "GenusName": {
      "Phylum": "...",
      "Subphylum": "...",
      "Class": "...",
      "region": "...",
      "sub-region": "...",
      "province": "...",
      "sub_province": "..."
    }
  },
  "isSynonym": false
}

data is a dictionary of genus records. isSynonym indicates that the API retried the search against the synonym field after finding no genus-name match.

When a non-empty searchquery finds no genus-name match, the API retries the search against Synonyms. This fallback can help resolve legacy or alternative names.

By default, all available columns are returned. Use genusOnly=true to reduce the response when only genus names are needed; combine with addSynonyms=true to include synonyms.