Wednesday, May 09, 2007

The New Noah's Ark

From aardvark to zinnia, all of Earth's known species to be cataloged on Web site - Northwest Florida Daily News: "WASHINGTON (AP) - In a whale-sized project, the world's scientists plan to compile everything they know about all of Earth's 1.8 million known species and put it all on one Web site, open to everyone.

The effort, called the Encyclopedia of Life, will include species descriptions, pictures, maps, videos, sound, sightings by amateurs, and links to entire genomes and scientific journal papers. Its first pages of information will be shown Wednesday in Washington where the massive effort is being announced by some of the world's leading institutions. The project will take about 10 years to finish.

'It's an interactive zoo,' said James Edwards, who will be the encyclopedia's executive director. Edwards currently helps run a global biodiversity information system."

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