README

The Paleobiology Database for omnisense/omnilab: a taxon, fossil or living, by its number or its name - its rank, accepted name, common name, whether it is extant, its first and last appearances in the fossil record (their intervals and their ages in millions of years), how many occurrences PBDB holds, its classification, its ecology (environment, motility, life habit, diet), its first reference, its picture; a fossil occurrence by its number; a search of names; and the fossils of a place and an age. No key.

$pbdb = (new PbdbSourceFactory($http))->create(['mailto' => 'support@glitchr.io']);
$rex = $pbdb->entity('54833');                    // or 'pbdb:54833', 'txn:54833', its page, 'Tyrannosaurus rex'
$rex->value('early_interval');                    // Campanian
$rex->value('last_appearance_min_ma');            // 66 Ma: a Quantity
$rex->value('diet');                              // carnivore

// The dinosaurs of 70 to 66 Ma over Montana and Wyoming: outside the contract.
$page = $pbdb->fossils(new OccurrenceQuery(new BBox(-110, 40, -100, 50),
    filters: [OccurrenceQuery::TAXON => 'Dinosauria', PbdbSource::MAX_MA => 70, PbdbSource::MIN_MA => 66]));
$page->total;                                     // 1282 (on 2026-10-16)
$page->first()->place;                            // where it was found
$page->first()->time;                             // null: an age is no date
$page->first()->value('max_ma');                  // 72.2 Ma

omnilab:
    sources:
        pbdb:
            factory: pbdb
            options:
                mailto: 'support@glitchr.io'   # in the User-Agent
                radius_km: 10                  # the circle around a Point, for fossils()

An age is no date: fossils(), outside the contract

The core's fourth shape, occurrences(), answers entities each with its time - an instant - and its place. A fossil's age is a span of geological time (72.2 to 66 million years ago, the Late Maastrichtian), which no DateTimeImmutable holds. So this source does not offer occurrences() (refused) and gives the same records through fossils(OccurrenceQuery): the same query object for the place (a BBox or a Point and its radius), the filters, the page size and the cursor; a period (from, to) refused; each entity with its place (where it was found today) and no time, its age in properties (max_ma, min_ma in Ma, early_interval, late_interval) and its place at the time (paleo_latitude, paleo_longitude). Its filters: OccurrenceQuery::TAXON, COUNTRY, and its own PbdbSource::MAX_MA, MIN_MA, INTERVAL.

PBDB gives no other base's id; a taxon is named in the core's pbdb scheme, a fossil in pbdb.occurrence. omnilab/col reads a pbdb: id when the Catalogue of Life names one for a taxon (none met on 2026-10-16).

Terms of use

The Paleobiology Database's data are under CC BY 4.0. PBDB asks that a use of its data say where it came from and when ("Data were downloaded from the Paleobiology Database on [date], using the following parameters: ..."), and cite the references the records come from (primary_reference). The data service needs no key and publishes no rate (paleobiodb.org/data1.2, paleobiodb.org/#/faq/citations).

See docs/ for what is read, how it maps, and what PBDB does not give here.

Responsibility

This package is an independent, unofficial client: it is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by the Paleobiology Database. It reaches their service on behalf of whoever runs it, and it does not redistribute their data beyond the short excerpts recorded as test fixtures. Its MIT licence covers this package's code only and grants no right to the service or to its data.

Whoever installs and runs this package is responsible for complying with the terms above, for obtaining whatever they require (an account, a key, a licence or subscription, an attribution or a citation, a rate limit to respect), and for any use made of what it returns. The authors publish it free of charge, make no commercial use of it, and accept no liability for how it is used (see LICENSE).

License: MIT.