近20万年来地球生物多样性及地球环境经历了多种多样的变化，尤其是过去11000年以来人类活动加剧了地球环境的恶化和物种的快速消亡，有部分学者提出人类正经历地质历史上的第六次生物集群灭绝事件。古今生物多样性研究的融通，将现代生物多样性问题放进地质历史的框架中分析，是认识生物和环境协同演变规律的重要途径，也是预估人类、生态系统以及地球环境未来发展的重要手段。基于此，依赖于数据积累的一门新型学科：保育古生物学正在兴起，越来越多的学者开始重视化石数据资料的积累，并建立了多种门类和不同用途的数据库，如启动于1998年的PBDB（Paleobiology Database）等。这些优秀的数据库提供了高质量的在线免费服务，并已产出不少重要成果。文章介绍了国内外古脊椎动物学领域的相关数据库及数据驱动下的重要研究实例，希望借此为深时数字地球计划（Deep-time Digital Earth）整合和共享开源的古脊椎动物大数据提供参考。

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.