PAST: Paleontological Statistics
A free, open-source software package for scientific data analysis, with specific tools for paleontologists, including data manipulation, plotting, statistics, ecological analysis, time series analysis, trait analysis and more.
What is PAST - PAlaeontological STatistics?
PAST is a comprehensive, user-friendly software package for scientific data analysis, with a focus on paleontology and paleobiology research. Developed by researchers at the University of Oslo, PAST provides a wide range of analytical tools and statistical tests within an intuitive graphical user interface.
Key features of PAST include:
- Data manipulation - Import, export, transform, sort, subsample, and manage paleontological and ecological datasets
- Exploratory data analysis - Summary statistics, histograms, boxplots, scatterplots, principal component analysis (PCA)
- Univariate statistical tests - t-tests, ANOVA, correlation, regression, non-parametric tests
- Multivariate statistics - PCA, detrended correspondence analysis, cluster analysis, discriminant analysis
- Diversity and abundance analysis - Species diversity indices, rarefaction, rank abundance plots
- Paleoecological analysis - Stratigraphic seriation, diversity partitioning
- Time series analysis - Spectral analysis, wavelet analysis, modeling
- Trait analysis - Measurement and analysis of biological traits
- Plotting and visualization - Publication-quality 2D and 3D graphical output
- Free and open-source - Actively developed by paleontologists
With an emphasis on ease-of-use and high-quality graphics, PAST enables researchers and students to thoroughly analyze, visualize, and interpret paleontological datasets. The availability of advanced multivariate tools in an accessible package makes PAST invaluable software for the paleobiology community.