Past is free software for scientific data analysis, with functions for data manipulation, plotting, univariate and multivariate statistics, ecological analysis, time series and spatial analysis, morphometrics and stratigraphy.

This program was initially designed as a follow-up to PALSTAT, a software package for paleontological data analysis written by P.D. Ryan, D.A.T. Harper and J.S. Whalley (Ryan et al. 1995). Through continuous development for more than twenty years, PAST has grown into a comprehensive statistics package used not only by paleontologists but in many fields of life science, earth science,
engineering and economics.

Further explanations of many of the techniques implemented together with case histories are found in the book “Paleontological data analysis” (Hammer & Harper 2005).

Past comes with a very detailed manual including how to import graphics, Excel, reading certain files and much more. Because of the large size (11 MB PDF), we've included it in the MajorGeeks mirror downloads.