关键词: 古脊椎动物学, 数据库, 大数据, 保育古生物学

Abstract: Over the past 200000 years, the Earth biodiversity and environment have suffered various catastrophic changes, especially the environment deterioration and species extinction accelerated by human activities in the past 11000 years. It is proposed that humans are experiencing the sixth mass extinction in Earth history. The modern biodiversity crisis can be better understood through its link to the paleo-biodiversity change in geological history. A study combining the past and present world could help us to understand the co-evolution between life and environment and further predict the Earth future. A new subject, Conservation Paleobiology, on this area is quickly rising. It relies more on data accumulation, and plenty of databases have been constructed to collect paleontological data. Among them the Paleobiology Database (PBDB) started its online service since 1998 and has gained various significant discoveries. Here, we introduce those major databases on vertebrate paleontology as well as examples of data-driven scientific discoveries, in order to provide reference for the international project, Deep-time Digital Earth (DDE), which aims to harmonize the global geoscience data resources.

Key words: Vertebrate Paleontology, database, big data, Conservation Paleobiology