Paleozoologists have long used taxa represented by ancient faunal remains to reconstruct paleoenvironments. Those ancient environments were the selective contexts in which hominin biological and cultural evolution took place. Knowing about those particularistic selective environments and how organisms responded to them is increasingly seen as critically important to identifying both how biota will respond to future (to some degree anthropogenically driven) environmental change, and biological conservation and management applications that will ensure sustainability of ecological resources and services. Reconstructing paleoenvironments requires knowledge of species’ ecological tolerances, geographic ranges, habitats, environments, and niches. It also requires assumptions that extant species had the same ecological tolerances in the past as they do today and that changes in taxonomic composition or abundances reflect environmental change rather than sampling or taphonomic factors. Greater knowledge of ecological processes as well as increased analytical sophistication in paleozoology is providing increasingly rigorous and detailed insights to paleoenvironments.

中文翻译：

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动物遗骸的古环境重建：生态学基础和分析假设

古生物学家长期以来一直使用以古代动物遗存为代表的分类单元来重建古环境。那些古老的环境是人类生物和文化进化的选择性环境。越来越多地认识到那些特殊的选择性环境以及生物体如何对它们做出反应，对于确定生物群群如何响应未来（在某种程度上是人为驱动）环境变化以及确保生态资源可持续性的生物保护和管理应用至关重要和服务。重建古环境需要了解物种的生态容忍度，地理范围，栖息地，环境和生态位。它还需要假设现有物种在过去具有与今天相同的生态容忍度，并且生物分类组成或丰度的变化反映的是环境变化，而不是抽样或分类学因素。对生态过程的更多了解以及对古生态学的分析日益深入，为古环​​境提供了越来越严格和详尽的见解。