Identifying fossil plants is a key task in palaeobotany. To provide support and easy access to gaining competence in identifying fossil angiosperm leaves, the web platform Digiphyll was developed. Digiphyll is intended to be suitable for teaching as well as for the general public. The ultimate objective is to promote the use of fossil plants in geoscientific research. Digiphyll is designed as an educational portal to provide effective assistance in identifying fossil plant material, accompanied by (1) information on fossil plants as well as (2) offering information about living relatives.
In fossil leaf material, relevant traits are usually incompletely preserved. The standard approach of a dichotomous key used for extant plants is therefore not well suited for fossil plants. Therefore, an alternative approach was developed which allows to work
(1) with an arbitrary number of recognisable traits and
(2) without a fixed sequence of traits.
To provide a long term continuation of the project Digiphyll was developed exclusively with Libre Open Source Software.
The following institutions supported the project by contributing specimens from their collections: