Modelling Palaeodistributions in Marine Environments: A Review

ABSTRACT Aim This scoping review (ScR) synthesises the current literature on the application of Species Distribution Models (SDM) to past marine environments. We assess how these models have been used to reconstruct past environmental suitability, track biogeographical shifts and investigate long‐term ecological dynamics, while identifying key knowledge gaps and methodological uncertainties related to data availability, biases and modelling approaches. Location Worldwide. Taxon Marine invertebrates, fishes, seabirds, cetaceans and foraminifera. Methods This review examines the application of SDM to reconstruct past marine species distributions through a systematic synthesis of the literature following PRISMA guidelines. A total of 37 studies were included, spanning diverse taxa, geographic regions and time periods from the Late Ordovician to the Holocene. Results Marine palaeo‐SDM reveal recurrent biogeographic responses to climatic change, including glacial range contractions, interglacial expansions, bathymetric redistributions and the persistence of oceanographically structured refugia. Reconstructed distributions highlight the role of sea‐level fluctuations, circulation patterns and productivity gradients in shaping connectivity, fragmentation and population structure. Integrating palaeo‐SDM with phylogeographic and fossil evidence further demonstrates how past climatic events influenced contemporary genetic diversity and dispersal pathways across marine ecosystems. Main Conclusions Marine palaeo‐SDM indicate strong climatic control on species distributions across space and time, but uncertainties linked to fossil data limitations, palaeoclimate variability and SDM algorithms remain substantial, particularly under non‐analogue climatic conditions. Future studies should expand spatial and temporal coverage, integrate ecological and multi‐proxy data and explicitly incorporate uncertainty through probabilistic and ensemble approaches to improve reconstructions of past marine biodiversity dynamics and predictions under ongoing climate change.