DSDP-to-Spread 1.0 Conversion Utility

©1990-1999 Pierre A. Zippi. All rights reserved.

Converts DSDP "PALEO".DAT files to tab-delimited ASCII TEXT files.

This application converts DSDP "PALEO".DAT files to tab-delimited ASCII TEXT files.
The resulting files may be used with spreadsheet, statistics and plotting applications on any platform.
 

See announcement: DSDP Paleo data conversion announcement.
 
Operation: 
1) In the Options menu, set Special handling options. 
2) Open a "PALEO".REF file; this loads taxa names and codes (required). 
3) Open the AGECODE.REF file; this loads geologic age names and codes (optional). 
4) Open the SITESUM.DAT file; this loads site specific information (optional). 
5) Open a "PALEO".DAT data file; this loads sample specific information (required). 
6) Select a destination to save the converted data files. 

The converted data files will be named for the leg, site number, hole and author; such as, 
22214 -HARRIS,W.K.
[Leg: 22, Site: 214, Hole: 1, Author: W.K. Harris]  Note: Blank hole=1

The converted data is saved as an Excel or a SimpleText TEXT file with: 
Ý All hole and author specific data as a header in the first lines of the data file as comment lines. 
Comment lines start with the "#" symbol. 
Ý species names in the first row as the column headers, 
Ý species codes in the second row (if selected in options), 
Ý core depth, sample depth, age, core, section and other sample specific references in the first 11 columns of each row. 
Ý the resulting species-by-sample matrix filled out with the coded abundance data. 
The abundance code legend is contained in the header of each file. 

Once in spreadsheet format, the utility of the occurrence data is greatly enhanced. Range charts may be constructed or statistical analyses performed. Use a proven commercial spreadsheet or statistics application to manipulate the data. 
Use WellPlot 3.0 (available from Pierre Zippi) to plot many different styles of range charts that can be incorporated into by virtually any Mac or PC graphics document.  Use Counter 3.0 for new data acquistion directly to large spreadsheets. 

DSDP PALEO.DAT data conversion to spreadsheet format using DSDPtoSpread 1.0
How the converted data sets were constructed.
All sample analyses for each hole are grouped into a single data set. 
There may be analyses performed by more than one analyst for an individual hole (data set). 
The author is listed in the 3rd column. If you wish to create data sets with only one author (analyst) then use a spreadsheet editor to sort the rows by the author column. 

Initially, I grouped all samples from the same hole and analysed by the same author as a data set. This worked fine for the earlier holes, but later holes had data "flip-flopping" between authors. This created numerous data sets for the same hole and each data set had large sample gaps. I settled on creating data sets that would be the most useful for biostratigraphy. 

Functions:

  • Opens very large data DSDP sets.
  • Determines unique taxa and abundance codes for each data set.
  • Reads data directly from DSDP CD-ROM.
  • Saves data as tab-delimited ASCII text files that may be opened with any text or spreadsheet application.

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    Price: $50 US retail, if purchased separately. Free with WellPlot 3.0 software package.
    System requirement: Macintosh 

    NOTE: The converted data will be available free of charge from NGDC/NOAA via ftp server.  Some paleo data types are available at the GEOMAR web site. 


    Pierre A. Zippi
    7518 Twin Oaks Court
    Garland, Texas 75044

    (972)-496-3642

    email: paz@pazsoftware.com

    How to order

    Go to: PAZ Software Homepage