Fossil continental molluscs have not hitherto been regarded as reliable paleoenvironmental indicators. Little was known about their ecological requirements or their position in characteristic biomes of the Quaternary climatic cycle, for instance in the loess steppe. Only recent analyses of their assemblages in a broad environmental context have shown that they are indicative of a number of important environmental phenomena in the same way as pollen grains or vertebrate remains. and Vojen Ložek.
Fossil molluscan successions from ca 450 sites provide evidence of the paleo-environmental history of the Czech Republic and Slovakia during the Quaternary. They not only reflect the Quaternary cycle of warm and cold phases but also a number of various events, such as the impact of the cold oscillation at 8,2 ky BP or the detailed reconstruction in time and space of the habitat patchwork in areas where other fossils are sparse or absent, particularly in karstlands, in the full scale of elevations. and Vojen Ložek.