Department of Anthropology, 107 Swallow Hall, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA.
Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc. 2012 Aug;87(3):513-25. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-185X.2011.00207.x. Epub 2011 Oct 27.
It has been argued by some neozoologists (those who study living animals) that the palaeozoological record is biased and incomplete (relative to an existing biological community) and therefore should not be consulted for purposes of conservation biology. An article published in a biology journal in 2011 lists numerous reasons why natural history collections (NHCs) of skins and skulls of animals collected over the past century or two are exceptionally valuable to conservation biologists because those collections provide significant time depth to numerous variables that document global biological change. Many of those same variables can be, and have been, identified in the palaeozoological record. Those variables are of major value to conservation biology, whether their values are taken from 100-year-old NHCs or from palaeozoological remains. Empirical examples in which the identified variables are measured in palaeozoological contexts indicate that the palaeozoological record should indeed be consulted by conservation biologists and can no longer be considered unsatisfactory for modern resource management.
一些新动物学家（研究现存动物的学者）认为，古动物学记录存在偏向性且不完整（相对于现存生物群落而言），因此不应该将其用于保护生物学研究。2011 年，一份生物学杂志上发表的文章列举了许多原因，说明过去一两个世纪收集的动物皮肤和头骨的自然历史收藏（NHC）对保护生物学家来说极其宝贵，因为这些收藏为数以千计的记录全球生物变化的变量提供了重要的时间深度。许多相同的变量可以并且已经在古动物学记录中被识别出来。这些变量对保护生物学具有重要价值，无论这些价值是来自于百年历史的 NHC 还是来自古动物学遗骸。在古动物学背景下测量已识别变量的实证案例表明，保护生物学家确实应该参考古动物学记录，并且不能再认为该记录不能满足现代资源管理的要求。
