Why I built PaleoData Explorer (and why it runs on Hugging Face)
When I first opened the Paleobiology Database API, I was amazed at what is in there — millions of fossil records spanning half a billion years. But the raw data is dense JSON: coordinates, ages, taxonomic names. I am a student, not a paleontologist, and I wanted to SEE it — to search a species and watch its story appear on a map of the ancient world.
So I built PaleoData Explorer: type any species or group, pick a time window, and get paleogeographic maps, deep-time timelines, Wikipedia-powered profiles, range charts, and clean exportable data.
The best engineering decision was the hosting. The app needed a backend, and I did not want to set up and maintain my own server — so it runs entirely on Hugging Face Spaces. I push the code, and anyone in the world can use it in the browser, free, with no install.
It is live now — try it: https://huggingface.co/spaces/benjamintia/PaleoData-Explorer
Next up: curated explorations (the last 10,000 years, marine vs terrestrial life), embeddable maps for researchers, and smarter search. If you are curious about life before us, give it a search — even a humble trilobite has a story.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.