Global Acritarch Database (>110 000 occurrences)

Abstract. Acritarchs, microfossils with an algal affinity, are of great significance for studying the origin and evolution of early life on Earth. Acritarch data are currently dispersed across various research institutions and databases worldwide, lacking unified integration and standardization. Palynodata was the largest database of acritarchs, containing 15 fields, 111 382 entries, 812 238 metadata items, and 7385 references. However, it lacked references post-2007 and excluded geographic data. Here, we collected and organized previous data, adding 24 fields, 4531 entries, 1 882 081 metadata points, and 424 references, to build a new global acritarch database. The expanded database now contains a total of 39 fields, covering genera, species, and related geological information (geological timescale, location, modern latitude and longitude, paleolatitude and paleolongitude, stratum, and others), amounting to 115 947 entries, 2 694 671 metadata, and 7816 references. Each entry is associated with fields that facilitate a better understanding of the geographical distribution and changes over geological timescales of acritarchs, thereby revealing their temporal and spatial distribution patterns and evolution throughout the history of the Earth. This article describes GAD version 1.0, which is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13828633 (Shu et al., 2024).