The palaeontological virtual collection of the University of Valencia’s Natural History Museum: a new tool for palaeontological heritage outreach

Abstract

The rise of new digitalization technologies is changing the way to access to the fossil collections for palaeontology outreach, providing new tools to preserve our important palaeontological heritage. In this sense, museums and palaeontological institutions,aware of the advantages of applying these new technologies for the accomplishment of their functions, have started to develop their own online repositories to facilitate the access to the most representative fossil of their collections. Following this trend, the aim of this work is to present the creation of the new “Virtual 3D Collection” of the University of Valencia’s Natural History Museum, showing, as an example, the “Ichnofossil Collection”. This new Virtual Collection has been shown as a powerful tool for the preservation and dissemination of our palaeontological heritage throughout its free publication in online repositories.