Summary: Paleoanthropologist Denne Reed of UT Austin is interviewed by host Jorge Salazar about making connections in big data from fossils of human origins. New discoveries might lie buried deep in the data of human fossils. That's according to Denné Reed, an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin). Reed is the principal investigator of PaleoCore, an informatics initiative funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The PaleoCore project aims to get researchers of human origins worldwide all on the same page with their fossil data. Reed said PaleoCore is doing this by implementing data standards; making a place to store all data of human fossils; and developing new tools to collect the data. What he hopes to come out of this are deeper insights into our origins from better integration and sharing between different research projects in paleoanthropology and paleontology. "We've tried to take advantage of some of the geo-processing and database capabilities that are available through Wrangler to create large archives," Reed said. The big data Reed wants to archive on Wrangler are the entirety of the fossil record on human origins. PaleoCore will also include geospatial data such as satellite imagery. "For many of the countries that we're working in, this is their cultural heritage. We need to be able to ensure that not only are the data rapidly available, accessible, searchable, and everything else, but that they're safely archived," Reed said. Music Credits: Raro Bueno, Chuzausen freemusicarchive.org/music/Chuzausen/
