The profound climatic changes and the need to identify solutions for the survival of humankind represent major topics of debate in contemporary society. Throughout their 200,000-year history modern humans have been faced with climatic changes some of them radical, which had a significant impact on the strategies employed for the exploitation and management of the environment, especially the animal life, and were reflected in the types of economic practices. Through this session proposal, we will analyze, quantify and compare the effects of this phenomenon and provide an integrated view of the ways in which the animal environment was exploited by prehistoric communities at the transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer-stockbreeder, identifying and comparing different eco-cultural models developed across Europe. The investigations will cover two priority domains: biodiversity evolution (e.g., taxonomic richness; magnitude of faunal turnover) and correlative human societal transformations, especially in animal management and techniques of exploitation (bone manufacturing). Among others, the aim of our session includes the identification of the modifications that intervened in the relation between the exploitation of the animal environment and the way in which it was reflected in palaeo-economy, habitat, social or spiritual organization. We invite speakers to discuss these topics from different perspectives; both theoretical and practical approaches are encouraged