The Commonwealth Palaeontological Collection is a national collection of almost exclusively Australasianfossils, including the type specimens of many new species and genera, which have been illustrated or otherwise referredto in scientific publications. The Collection originated with the 1927 appointment in Melbourne of a CommonwealthPalaeontologist, who soon established a separate register of such published specimens, which quickly became recognisedby the prefixed acronym CPC. The Collection is currently housed in Canberra, and administered by the AustralianGeological Survey Organisation (AGSO), previously known as the Bureau of Mineral Resources, Geology & Geophysics(BAIR). The collection has grown steadily, and at the time of writing contains nearly 33,000 specimens. A somewhatfuller historical account has been given in the introduction to previous catalogues in this series.
The steady increase in the size of the Collection since the early 1960's reflects a strong research effort todocument through formal taxonomic description fossil faunas and floras from all ages and areas which have been thesubject of geological investigations by BMR and now AGSO. The Commonwealth Palaeontological Collection is thusan essential database for biochronological dating of sedimentary rocks, with wide application in geological mapping andsubsurface investigations associated with all aspects of land use, including petroleum and mineral exploration. Thespecimens it contains document the evolutionary history of the Australian biota over the last 3,000 million years, andalso include extensive material from Papua New Guinea, the Australian Antarctic Territory, and the seafloor of ourcontinental shelves.
A first series of catalogues of the Collection, part of a more extensive series covering many Universitycollections, was published by Crespin in 1960, 1971 and 1974 as Bls/IR Reports 54, 148, 160. This catalogue is thelatest in the current series, which is being produced from the AGSO 'Oracle' database PALEO. The first threecatalogues appeared as part of the same BMR Report series, which has now been discontinued. These covered theBrachiopoda (Report 298), Bryozoa (Report 305), and the Archaeocyatha. Porifera and Coelenterata (combined in Report307). The introduction to those catalogues contains a more detailed discussion of the development of both catalogueseries. Two catalogues start the second part of this new series, appearing in the AGSO Record series: one on theVertebrata, and the present one on the Conodonta. Further volumes will appear as data entry for particular taxonomicgroups is brought up to date.
