Paleoecology, which studies environmental change through geologic time, often made predictions about ecological change by comparing the changes experienced by vegetation communities in the past with similar changes facing modern communities. The modern analog method, which relied on these comparisons and was developed by G. Evelyn Hutchinson in the 1930s, became the linchpin of the field. But what happened to a scientific field when anthropogenic climate change threatened the main way that paleoecologists understood the past and future? This paper explores this question first by examining Hutchinson's method and then examining how paleoecologists modified the tools of their profession in an era of global change when they encountered “no analog situations,” moments when the present did not look anything like the changes experienced in the past. The crisis that no analog situations presented led to broader discussions about the purpose of deep time in studying environmental change, which I take up in the second half of my paper. With no analog situations, I argue that paleoecologists were forced to admit that “history is better suited to providing cautionary tales rather than specific images of future climate and vegetation change." The predictive power they had claimed by knowing the deep past faded in an era of global change.
