GONIAT is designed as a tool for investigations of the Paleozoic ammonoids, their paleogeographic distribution, and their biostratigraphic range. The underlying database provides not only determinations based on morphological characteristics, but also information on occurrence, duration, literature, and phylogenetic relationships of every taxon of family, genus, and species levels.

The development of GONIAT online was supported by the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft)

GONIAT online is also meant as a reference system for biological and paleontological databases and as such is well-suited to be transferred to other fossil or animal/plant groups (see Technical information). GONIAT online is open source and depends only on open source components. The source code can be acquired by contacting info-at-goniat-dot-org.