Today, our public database of verified measurements passed 500 entries. Thirty seven contributors, ranging from students to programmers to librarians to professional paleontologists, combed nearly 130 publications and filled just under 3,500 spreadsheet cells with numerical data. Many previously unpublished measurements have also made the list. A few contributors entered data for a single specimen, and others entered data for dozens. Any way you slice it, this is an impressive effort.
The past week has also seen some nice mentions of the ODP in various places:
- Citizen Science Projects blogged about the ODP this past week. For more on “citizen science” from the ODP’s perspective, check out Matt’s post on Engineering the Shiny Digital Future.
- CBC 1’s program Spark had a featured a segment on citizen science, including a mention of the ODP! It’s worth checking out for a fun and informative background on the ideas behind open notebook science and citizen science. The link to the program is here, and you can download the MP3 of the entire podcast here. The segment on open notebook science runs from 16:00 to 23:30; ODP is discussed from 20:05 to 20:25.
- Mathematics professor Andy Lang, a long-time supporter of open notebook science, blogged about how and why he got some of his students involved in entering data for the Open Dinosaur Project. We love to see the project integrated into an educational environment in this way!
The Open Dinosaur Project 
Fantastic! Great to see news of the project spread around–it’s a very cool thing.