Salawusu (37°20'~37°58'N, 108°08'~108°48'E) is located at the southeastern margin of the Mu Us Desert of Ordos Plateau and in the northwest margin of the East Asian monsoon. The region is of interest for palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimatic studies because the environment in this region is sensitive to climate changes. Specifically, the Salawusu Formation has been viewed as a typical stratigraphy for Late Pleistocene fluvio-lacustrine sediment in northern China, especially in North China. The Late Pleistocene sediments have yielded abundant vertebrate fossils that are known as Salawushu fauna. And the fossil tooth discovered in Salawusu is the first Paleolithic human fossil found in China and even in East Asia. Furthermore, the fluvio-lacustrine sediment is a natural outcrop of 30m and 40m in thickness above the riverbed on the bank of the Salawusu River, which is referred to as an ideal section for reconstructing climatic and environmental change. Therefore, the stratigraphy, paleontology and environmental change have been investigated and researched intensively by several teams during the past century. This paper reviews and synthesizes a large body of research literatures, including paleobiological, human fossil records and paleoenvironmental changes in order to better understand the research situation in paleontology and environment, and what further research is required? The main results can be summaried as follows: (1) 45 species of Vertebrate fossils, of which 34 species are mammals and 12 species are birds, have been found from different stratigraphy and places along the bank of the Salawusu River. The age of stratum in which Vertebrate fossils have been discovered ranges from 35ka to 148ka. 15 human fossil remains have been found in this district, of which 6 have been discovered from the original layers. The fauna is made up of a variety of vertebrate. Some species occur in forest or forest-steppe under higher temperature and relatively high moisture conditions, others live in temperate steppe and desert-steppe, and still others adapt to desert condition. However, the study on stratigraphy,chronology and environments of vertebrate fossils present some confusing results and are not satisfactory because some of them are not clear enough in layer and dating. Therefore,the comprehensive comparison and analysis (such as topography,stratigraphic,lithology,sedimentary environment,and the dating, etc.) of the entire section in which the fossil found is useful to understand the biological sequence and environmental change. In addition, the studies on the human fossils from the original layers are still necessary. (2) The pollen spectra from Salawusu show the pollen assemblages of most of the samples are dominated by subshrub and herb components including Artemisia and Chenopodiaceae,except that the pollen assemblages of some samples are marked by the higher percentage of Pinus. The pollen assemblages from Salawusu Formation likely reflect a steppe, open forest-steppe or forest-steppe landscape and a moderate climate. The pollen assemblages from Chengchuan Formation suggest an expansion of Poaceae-dominated steppe. However, there is considerable uncertainty in pollen-based reconstruction of vegetation changes and climate variations,because samples and pollen grains counted for each of the samples are poorly and the intensive study is rare about the modern pollen-rain. Specifically, there are no high-resolution pollen records during the Late Pleistocene, so that it is inadequate for reflecting climatic variation on millennial and centennial timescales. Thus based on well-dated sequence, the vegetation changes inferred from the high-resolution pollen record and associated climate variations during the Late Pleistocene and Holocene in the Salawusu need to be studied.