Fossil Wiki:Welcome, newcomers

Fossil Wiki is an online encyclopedia focused on fossils and paleontology, which is written collaboratively by its readers, who are a part of the larger Wikia community. The site is a Wiki, meaning that anyone, including you, can edit almost any article right now by clicking on the  link that appears at the top of the page.

Browsing Fossil Wiki
Fossil Wiki aims to contain a huge amount of information on all sorts of subjects relating to, past, present, and future ranging from individuals, locations, dinosaurs, and museums to everything and anything in between. It also includes articles on movies and books, as well as artists, etc who have worked on the subject of paleontology. Try browsing the various categories now.

You can also search for text in articles. Just go to the "search" field to the left, enter your search term and click "search". Note that the built-in search function may be disabled in times of server overload; in these cases you will be redirected to a Google-based search of the Fossil Wiki database.

If you read something that you really like, or have a comment on ways the article may be improved, then why not drop a note on the article's talk page? First select the  link (look for it in the tabs above the page), to get to the talk page. Then select ' on the talk page, or click the + to the right of ' to simply add a new comment. We always love to get a little constructive criticism, and positive feedback.

Editing
Everyone can edit pages on Fossil Wiki &mdash; even this page! Just click the  link at the top of any page (except for protected pages) if you think it needs any improvement or new information. You don't need anything special; you don't even need to be logged in. If you want to experiment first, without risk of "messing up" a real article, head over to the sandbox, where you can practice editing to your heart's content. To practice editing an existing page like this one, just copy and paste it from the article's edit page into the sandbox.

If you want to learn more, check out the pages listed in our help page index. Our editing help pages should be able to answer any basic questions you might have as a member of our project, but if you have more advanced questions feel free to ask your question in The Field Site.