Species Occurrence Records
A billion-record archive of where and when species have been observed worldwide.
What this dataset is
A harmonised archive of more than one billion species-occurrence records — every record being an observation of a species at a place and time. Records are aggregated from public biodiversity networks, deduplicated, and cleaned against an authoritative taxonomic backbone.
Each record carries: the canonical species name, a stable taxon identifier, latitude and longitude, observation date, basis of record (human observation, specimen, machine observation, etc.), and a link back to the original source.
What you get
- A single global Parquet archive, partitioned by phylum and year for fast filtering.
- A CSV mirror for users who prefer flat files.
- A taxonomy lookup table mapping every record to kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species.
Typical uses
- Species-distribution and range modelling.
- Biodiversity hotspot mapping.
- Invasive species and biosecurity monitoring.
- Citizen-science engagement and education.
Data quality
Many records carry uncertainty — about taxonomy, location, or date. Each record has a quality flag indicating whether it passed our standard quality filters. We recommend the standard quality subset for most analyses.
