Supplementary material from "A Decade of Vertebrate Paleontology Research: Global Taxa Distribution, Gender Dynamics, and Evolving Methodologies"

Using 12,104 publications from 2014-2023 in the DeepBone database, this study employs bibliometric methods, including full-text Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) modeling, co-occurrence network analysis, and geographic mapping with ArcGIS, to examine three key aspects of vertebrate paleontology development: geographic distribution of newly established taxa, gender demographics among researchers, and research trends. Gender data were analyzed using automated tools with manual verification to ensure accuracy, while methodological evolution was investigated through systematic text mining and classification. Among 8,336 newly established taxa, mammals (34.72%) and fishes (29.76%) dominate, followed by reptiles (25.34%), birds (7.39%), and amphibians (2.80%). Geographic analysis reveals significant regional disparities, with the United States (13.50%) and China (13.32%) contributing most, while Africa and Oceania remain underrepresented (<10%). Gender analysis indicates a gradual increase in female representation from 22.78% to 27.20% over the decade, highlighting the imperative to address gender disparities in vertebrate paleontology, thereby advancing equity in alignment with UNESCO Sustainable Development Goal 5. LDA topic modeling identifies 15 distinct research topics, encompassing evolutionary biology, cranial and skeletal morphology, dinosaur-bird evolution, and human evolution, while co-occurrence analysis highlights the evolution of research methodologies, revealing strong interconnections between phylogenetic analysis (15%), traditional morphological analysis (12%), and high-resolution imaging techniques (9%).