The start of PALSYS
PALSYS originated in the early ‘90s at the LPP Foundation, a non-profit consultancy with strong ties to the palynological and paleobotanical research group at Utrecht University. PALSYS emerged in times of a growing need – in industry and research – for a platform to house digital, consistent and comprehensive micropaleontological data. Key players in the development of PALSYS were Henk Visscher, Henk Brinkhuis and Jan-Willem Weegink, the latter literally roaming institutes worldwide to collect images of holotypes and otherwise valuable material, and was spearheading the functional design of PALSYS.

2000–2012
Earlier versions of PALSYS, back then a Microsoft Access-based catalogue, were sold to over 25 oil companies and institutes worldwide. The content largely consisted of dinoflagellate cyst data: taxonomic descriptions, synonymy and images. The revenues of these purchases went – adhering to the statutory mission of the LPP Foundation – directly back into the further development of the database: further expansion of the image collection, more research to stratigraphically calibrate dinocyst events to the international time scale, and translation of species descriptions from foreign languages into English. Further improvements of the platform and its content were made by the biostratigraphy team at the Netherlands Institute for Applied Scientific Research (TNO), that took over the commercial activities of the LPP Foundation in 2000. In this time, particularly instrumental were Oscar Abbink and Timme Donders.

2012–2018
When the LPP Foundation reconvened commercial activities in 2012, one of the first missions was to revive the functionality of PALSYS. Modern operating systems could no longer run the out-dated platform underlying PALSYS, the functionality needed expansion and, particularly, the databases required a major update. There was a clear need for a web-based platform. Together with the applied biostratigraphers at TNO, notably Sander Houben, Peter Bijl constructed a completely new design of the platform, the end result of which is PALSYS.org. The new platform makes it possible to present all micropaleontological data comprehensively and self-consistently presented under one roof. We made sure we can easily update the data, allow personal edits and incorporation of in-house data, include a stratigraphic plotter per species and genus, added many more interactive features and also improved the functionalities for training and education. Because many institutes around the world saw the added value of PALSYS.org for their institute as a way to reduce storage space, decrease time spent on training and make sure information is up-to-date, we received sufficient funding to not only fully develop all desired functionalities, but also update the database content.

2018–now
When the LPP Foundation terminated in 2018, the intellectual property of PALSYS.org was transferred to the Department of Earth Sciences of Utrecht University. As part of Utrecht University’s open access commitments, PALSYS.org was prepared to become an open access platform. This process was led by Peter Bijl.

The website assumes users already know basic morphological/taxonomic features of dinoflagellate cysts and their suprageneric classification, and know roughly what geologic time slice users work in. PALSYS.org follows the citation index of DINOFLAJ3 (Williams et al., 2017), to which we are greatly appreciative. PALSYS.org houses not only the currently active genera and species, but also the emended genera and species, and links between junior and senior synonyms, so that synonymy can be traced back. Genera can be filtered using (1) a simplified Evitt (1985) key, which filters genera into Evits morphologic complexes and/or (2) based on age, whereby the age ranges of genera are derived from DINOSTRAT (Bijl, 2023), or is otherwise roughly inferred from available literature.

If you like PALSYS.org, and use it a lot, there is two ways by which you can support it:
First, you can greatly help us by sending us images, species and genus descriptions, errors and updates. Do so via the FEEDBACK/REPORT BUG button in the bottom right corner of your screen.
Second, this website is maintained and kept up-to-date with limited institutional funding. If this website helps you, you can help this website by donating whatever you can spare to the Henk Visscher Fund, so that we can keep up the good work.
Please donate at https://www.uu.nl/en/organisation/donate/henk-visscher-fund.

The advisory board of palsys.org now consists of:
Peter Bijl, Appy Sluijs, Francesca Sangiorgi (Utrecht University), Henk Brinkhuis (Netherlands Institute for Sea Research), Kasia Sliwinska, Karen Dybkjaer (Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland), Alina Iakovleva (Geological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences)
Jim Riding (British Geologic Survey), Fabienne Marret (Liverpool University, UK), Martin Head (Brock University, Canada), Poul Schiøler (MG Palaeo), Manuel Vieira (Aker BP), Raquel Guerstein (Universidad Nacional del Sur)

This website is owned by the Department of Earth Sciences, Utrecht University. Principle responsible researcher is Peter Bijl.
Profile page www.uu.nl/staff/pkbijl.

The easiest way to come into contact with the makers of Palsys.org is through the FEEDBACK/REPORT BUG button in the bottom right corner of your screen.

Department of Earth Sciences
Princetonlaan 8A
3584 CB Utrecht
Netherlands
Email: p.k.bijl@uu.nl
Phone: +31 253 9318
Cell: +31 644974474

There are so many people to thank for their contributions to PALSYS.org in the past, that we can never be complete. The DINOFLAJ citation index of Graham Williams, Rob Fensome and Andrew McRae, which on itself stands on a long history, serves as the backbone for the dinocyst database on PALSYS.org, and them sharing their efforts is invaluable. With apologies in advance for omission, we definitely would like to thank Raymond Below, Jonathan Bujak, Sarah Damassa, Hans Gocht, Raquel Guerstein, Martin J. Head, Karl-Heinz Kirsch, Judith Lentin, Lars Henrik Nielsen, Martin Pearce, Michael Prauss, Walter Riegel, Kasia Sliwińska, Bruce Tocher, Laurent de Verteuil, Graeme Wilson, Martin Head, Jim Riding, Jörg Pross, Francesca Sangiorgi, Poul Schiøler, Appy Sluijs and Karin Zonneveld for providing content, images, texts, discussions, and user feedback. At LPP and TNO, special thanks go out to Henk Visscher, Henk Brinkhuis, Jan-Willen Weegink, Oscar Abbink, Timme Donders, Roel Verreusel and Sander Houben. Many students helped out over the past years: Karin Zwiep, Pam Vervoort, Carolien van der Weijst, Keechy Akkerman, Benjamin Hoogstraten, Emma Kilcoyne and Saskia Frauenschuh. If you feel you should be added to this list, please contact us.