Over the past decade, sclerochronological research has continued to develop rapidly and is diversifying with respect to methods, taxa, geographic coverage as well as temporal depth. Chonologically aligned environmental records from bivalves, gastropods, coralline algae, corals, and many other periodically formed biogenic hard parts are integrated to build networks across broad spatial domains and trophic levels. Replication and exact dating ensure that environmental signals are fully preserved and facilitate the integration among chronologies as well as observational records of climatic and biological phenomena. The proliferation of chronologies promises to usher in a new era of synthesis that integrates tropical to polar environments and links with other high-resolution archives such as tree-ring chronologies to assess broad-scale couplings between the ocean and atmosphere across different latitudes. An increasing number of studies also applies sclerochronological methods to fossils from the more distant past and studies paleoclimate variability in deep time. At the same time, rapid advances are being made in developing, optimizing and validating proxies from isotopes, trace and minor elements, and ultrastructures (aka microstructures) of periodically growing skeletal hard parts to reveal new parameters of environmental variability from these exactly dated frameworks. Beyond the importance for paleoclimatology, information recorded in such archives is of increasing relevance to ecology and management to provide insights on life history, population connectivity, productivity, and disentangling the impacts of natural and anthropogenic environmental and climate change. Likewise, environmental information from archaeological samples are providing new insights into long-term interactions between climate variability and dynamics of past human societies. This introductory review paper provides insights into advances in the field of sclerochronology, with an emphasis on mollusks, including trends in the analysis of growth patterns, development and interpretation of proxies, diversity of taxa used in sclerochronological research, as well as the geographic and temporal coverage of sclerochronological research.

在过去的十年中，年代学研究一直在迅速发展，并且在方法，分类，地理覆盖范围和时间深度方面都在多样化。来自双壳类，腹足纲动物，珊瑚藻，珊瑚和许多其他定期形成的生物成因硬质部分的按时间顺序排列的环境记录被整合，以建立跨越广泛的空间域和营养级的网络。复制和精确的日期可确保环境信号得到充分保留，并促进年代学以及气候和生物现象的观测记录之间的整合。年代学的激增有望开启一个综合的新纪元，该时代将热带与极地环境融为一体，并与其他高分辨率档案（如树轮年表）建立联系，以评估不同纬度的海洋与大气之间的广泛耦合。越来越多的研究还将硬化年代学方法应用于更遥远的过去的化石，并研究了深层时期的古气候变化。同时，在开发，优化和验证来自同位素，痕量和微量元素以及周期性生长的骨骼硬质零件的超微结构（又称微结构）的代理方面取得了快速进展，以从这些过时的框架中揭示环境变异性的新参数。除了古气候学的重要性外，此类档案中记录的信息与生态和管理的相关性越来越高，以提供有关生活史，人口连通性，生产力以及消除自然和人为环境与气候变化影响的见解。同样，来自考古样本的环境信息也为气候变异性与过去人类社会的动力之间的长期相互作用提供了新的见解。这份介绍性综述文章提供了对年代学领域的进展的见识，重点是软体动物，包括生长模式分析的趋势，代理的发展和解释，年代学研究中使用的分类单元的多样性以及地理和时间年代学研究的范围。