From the BBC:
The Encyclopedia of Life project aims to detail all 1.8 million known plant and animal species in a net archive.
Individual species pages will include photographs, video, sound and maps, collected and written by experts.
The archive, to be built over 10 years, could help conservation efforts as well as being a useful tool for education.
"The Encyclopedia of Life will provide valuable biodiversity and conservation information to anyone, anywhere, at any time," said Dr James Edwards, executive director of the $100m (£50m) project.
"[It] will ultimately make high-quality, well-organized information available on an unprecedented level."
The vast database will initially concentrate on animals, plants and fungi with microbes to follow. Fossil species may eventually be added.
To begin with, information will be harvested from existing databases, such as FishBase which already contains details of 29,900 species....
It could eventually fill with many more species than the original 1.8 million known today. Biologists estimate that there could be anywhere between five and 100 million species on the planet.
Friday, May 11, 2007
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