The Neotoma Paleoecological Database is a collaborative effort among individuals from 19 institutions around the world and 23 constituent databases. Neotoma covers micro and macrofossil occurrences and assemblages from mammals, ostracodes, diatoms, pollen and plant macrofossils and charcoal and physical sedimentology from across the Pliocene-Quaternary, the time during which humans evolved, and during which modern ecosystems developed. Neotoma provides an underlying cyberinfrastructure that enables the development of common software tools for data ingest, discovery, display, analysis, and distribution, while giving domain scientists control over critical taxonomic and other data quality issues. The Neotoma Community operates with a bottom-up design so that data structure and quality are determined by advisory boards representing the various data communities (consortia). Neotoma can accommodate virtually any type of fossil data; it is available for use by other data cooperatives that are welcome to develop their own individualized front-ends to the database, as well as remotely input and update data.