The study of biodiversity responses to past climate change can greatly help us understand current threats and forecast future responses.

There is ample evidence of effective migration, in situ tolerance, and adaptation in response to past climate changes. But there is also evidence of widespread extinctions.

The unprecedented nature of modern global change greatly complicates prediction. Large uncertainties remain about the expected rates of migration and evolutionary adaptation, or the role of phenotypic plasticity in avoiding extinction.

Integrative research programmes combining paleorecords (e.g., fossils, ancient genomics) with mechanistic models and experiments (e.g., resurrection experiments) hold great promise to improve our understanding and predictive ability.