If the climate were to go through a cooling cycle there would be a fossil record in the layers of sediments globally that would suggest a shrinking of the green bands around the earth. That is to say that latitudes that could support plant growth would become more limited and closer to the equator. As the planet goes through a warming cycle that fossil record (if one was able to find and identify it) would show plant species growth shift and change and expand towards the polar regions to areas that were once unable to support life due to previous frozen periods. With that plant matter would be the following animal life as migration patterns change and expand as abundance shifted.