The Paleobiology Interest Group (Paleo) was established in 2015 to broaden the application of existing standards such as Darwin Core to accommodate paleobiological data. This will represent the inaugural meeting of the interest group at a TDWG conference.

The group seeks to extend existing standards to meet the needs of paleobiology and to foster greater integration between neontology and paleontology in the study of biodiversity across space and deep time.  Understanding long-term temporal patterns in biodiversity provides the context for interpreting modern changes in biodiversity and understanding the process responsible for these changes.

Employing biodiversity information standards, such as Darwin Core to paleobiology data requires addressing a broader range of metadata requirements and adapting best practices. The role of the Paleo group is to provide guidelines for deploying existing biodiversity standards to paleobiology and to propose extensions and modifications to existing standards to make them more amenable (and generalizable) for paleobiology.

The primary goals for the 2016 meeting of the Paleobiology Interest Group are: 1) to update TDWG members on the group's progress, 2) to establish a reliable schedule of meetings and communication outside of the annual meetings, 3) to generate a list of the most common paleobiological use cases for deploying existing standards such as Darwin Core, in paleobiology, 4) to discuss and produce examples of Darwin Core entries for those use cases and in the process 5) identify challenges that arise in applying Darwin Core to paleobiology data.

The annual meetings offer the best opportunity for bringing biodiversity information specialists together with disciplinary specialists in paleobiology to resolve questions and make concrete advances in broadening the application of biodiversity information standards in a new disciplinary domain.