News Brief

(IsraelNN.com) A new internet site is dedicated to trying to document every species of life on the planet, with an eye toward trying to figure out exactly what Noah put in the ark, among other things. Welcome to the "Encyclopedia of Life", with its 10-year mission to create internet pages for each of the 1.8 million currently named species of life on Planet Earth.

The Field Museum of Natural History, Harvard University, Marine Biological Laboratory, Smithsonian Institution and Biodiversity Heritage Library joined together to initiate the project, described as "an unprecedented global effort to document all 1.8 million named species of animals, plants and other forms of life on Earth." The site's home page (http://www.eol.org) invites the reader to participate in a biodiversity database that functions as "an ecosystem of websites that makes all key information about all life on Earth accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world." According to a news release issued by the group, that will include species that have just been discovered as well.

The project, funded by a $10 million grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and $2.5 million from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, is being led by Dr. James Edwards, Executive Secretary of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.