Humans now play a major role in altering Earth and its biota. Finding ways to ameliorate human impacts on biodiversity and to sustain and restore the ecosystem services on which we depend is a grand scientific and societal challenge. Conservation paleobiology is an emerging discipline that uses geohistorical data to meet these challenges by developing and testing models of how biota respond to environmental stressors. Here we (a) describe how the discipline has already provided insights about biotic responses to key environmental stressors, (b) outline research aimed at disentangling the effects of multiple stressors, (c) provide examples of deliverables for managers and policy makers, and (d) identify methodological advances in geohistorical analysis that will foster the next major breakthroughs in conservation outcomes. We highlight cases for which exclusive reliance on observations of living biota may lead researchers to erroneous conclusions about the nature and magnitude of biotic change, vulnerability, and resilience.

Conservation of species and ecosystems is increasingly difficult because anthropogenic impacts are pervasive and accelerating. Under this rapid global change, maximizing conservation success requires a paradigm shift from maintaining ecosystems in idealized past states toward facilitating their adaptive and functional capacities, even as species ebb and flow individually. Developing effective strategies under this new paradigm will require deeper understanding of the long-term dynamics that govern ecosystem persistence and reconciliation of conflicts among approaches to conserving historical versus novel ecosystems. Integrating emerging information from conservation biology, paleobiology, and the Earth sciences is an important step forward on the path to success. Maintaining nature in all its aspects will also entail immediately addressing the overarching threats of growing human population, overconsumption, pollution, and climate change.