Changes in community composition and species distribution in response to global changes have often been revealed thanks to long-term surveys of charismatic animal species. Here, we show that unstructured occurrence data contained in global biodiversity databases can be used to unearth the patterns of biodiversity restructuring that occured recently in response to human activity, especially ­– but not limited to – climate change. This opens new opportunities for global change research on taxonomic groups that have received little attention so far.