NEWS.md

In ropensci/paleobioDB: Download and Process Data from the Paleobiology Database

paleobioDB 1.0.0

This new major version of the paleobioDB package uses a new API version. It is possible that code written for previous versions might not be compatible. If you need to run older code, you might have to rewrite it or to install an older version of the package.

NEW FEATURES

• Update to API version 1.2 (#51, #57).

• The new functions pbdb_specimen(), pbdb_specimens(), pbdb_ref_specimens(), and pbdb_measurements() can be used to get information about fossil specimens and measurements associated with them.

• The new functions pbdb_opinion(), pbdb_opinions() and pbdb_opinions_taxa() can be used to get information about taxonomic opinions.

MINOR IMPROVEMENTS

• Methods from package terra (instead of raster) are used in functions that plot and return raster objects.

• Function and argument names consistently use snake case now, so some argument names have been changed (e.g. the do.plot parameter available in many plotting functions has been renamed to do_plot).

• Query functions warn the user when no records are returned.

• Query functions report warnings generated by the API instead of silently ignoring them.

• In pbdb_map_richness(), pbdb_richness(), and pbdb_orig_ext(), there is now an option to provide a title or a label for the y axis.

BUG FIXES

• In the pbdb_temp_range() plot, taxa names are now more readable (#22).

• pbdb_richness() prevents x axis title from overlapping with tick labels if these are long (#43).

• Fix bug in map plotting caused by latitude and longitude values being returned as strings by the API (#50).

• Fix a certificate issue in RCurl that affected Windows users (#53, #54).

DOCUMENTATION FIXES

• Update documentation to reflect parameter name changes in version 1.2 of the API.

paleobioDB 0.7.0

MINOR IMPROVEMENTS

• Ensures travis fails on either API or internal tests failure

BUG FIXES

• Fix issue 45 about wrong API endpoint.

• Fix errors in several functions in rpbdb_temporal_functions.R

paleobioDB 0.6.0

MINOR IMPROVEMENTS

• Integrates codecov

• Adds tests execution to travis. Tests are not part of the CRAN check for this package since they rely on calling to the PaleobioDB API.

• Improves error reporting in pbdb_temp_range. issue 28

BUG FIXES

• Fix error in pbdb_occurrences under R 3.5.

paleobioDB 0.5.0

BUG FIXES

• Fix bug after JSON responses from the API started including the "elapsed_time" before the "records" element.

paleobioDB 0.4.0

MINOR IMPROVEMENTS

• From now our functions for exploring the data of the paleobioDB use "matched_name" and "matched_number" instead of raw names and raw taxon numbers of the former versions of the package. This means that the default output of richness and first and last occurrences of species/genus/etc. changed. Before we used the original taxonomic identification of the fossil records, now we use the revised taxonomic identification of the fossil records.

BUG FIXES

• Fix duplicated records bug in pbdb_occurrences caused by API returning and array of two identical values in field "reference_no". From now on, if a filed is returned by the API as an array it will be mapped to a semicolon separated string.

ropensci/paleobioDB documentation built on March 5, 2024, 3:08 a.m.