Palaeogeographic globe · EarthThruTime3D

Present

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Earth interior

Crustal thickness Approximate mantle overlay

Shared surface cutaway Surface cutaway South latitude -35° North latitude 55° West longitude 35° East longitude 125°

A west longitude greater than east crosses the date line. Equal longitudes leave the surface uncut.

Crust and mantle share the same cutaway. CRUST 2.0 is shown only at the present (0 Ma).

SELECTED TIME

Present

0 Ma

Modern World

This view shows only the land–sea boundary segmented from the PALEOMAP PaleoAtlas (2016) maps. The original map images are not distributed; the archive is on the Zenodo record ↗.

An approximate view: segmented land and sea painted on a sphere. It carries neither the original relief nor its place names, and it is not a model that computes plate motion.

Choose a plate rotation model from the boundaries dropdown in the menu (☰) to reconstruct the continents at the same time and draw them over the map. There are 5 models; the default is no boundaries. With a model chosen, its plate boundaries are drawn over the land mask.

Overlay fossil-checked coastlines

Method and data

The land masks were segmented from the 90 maps of the PALEOMAP PaleoAtlas (2016). The originals are equirectangular, so no projection is assumed and pixels map straight to longitude and latitude. Period names come from each map's age with the ICS 2023/09 boundaries; the English titles are the original file names.

Scotese, C. R., 2016. PALEOMAP PaleoAtlas for GPlates and the PaleoData Plotter Program. PALEOMAP Project (www.scotese.com). doi:10.5281/zenodo.10251792 · Zenodo record lists CC BY 4.0

Compare: view with the Scotese PALEOMAP web maps (2002) masks

Compare: view with the PALEOMAP PaleoDEM elevation grids (2018) masks

Plate reconstruction · Merdith et al. 2021 (palaeomagnetic)
Merdith, A. S., Williams, S. E., Collins, A. S., Tetley, M. G., Mulder, J. A., Blades, M. L., Young, A., Armistead, S. E., Cannon, J., Zahirovic, S., and Müller, R. D., 2021. Extending full-plate tectonic models into deep time: Linking the Neoproterozoic and the Phanerozoic. Earth-Science Reviews, 214, 103477.
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported

Plate reconstruction · Cao et al. 2024 (palaeomagnetic, extended to 1.8 Ga)
Cao, X., Collins, A. S., Pisarevsky, S., Flament, N., Li, S., Hasterok, D., and Müller, R. D., 2024. Earth's tectonic and plate boundary evolution over 1.8 billion years. Geoscience Frontiers, 15(2), 101922.
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

Plate reconstruction · Matthews et al. 2016 (hybrid mantle (GK07))
Matthews, K. J., Maloney, K. T., Zahirovic, S., Williams, S. E., Seton, M., and Müller, R. D., 2016. Global plate boundary evolution and kinematics since the late Paleozoic. Global and Planetary Change, 146, 226-250.
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

Plate reconstruction · Müller et al. 2022 (optimised mantle)
Müller, R. D., Flament, N., Cannon, J., Tetley, M. G., Williams, S. E., Cao, X., Bodur, Ö. F., Zahirovic, S., and Merdith, A., 2022. A tectonic-rules-based mantle reference frame since 1 billion years ago – implications for supercontinent cycles and plate–mantle system evolution. Solid Earth, 13, 1127–1159.
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

Plate reconstruction · Scotese 2016 PALEOMAP (PALEOMAP (plate 001 'Hot Spot to PMAG' is the identity))
Scotese, C. R., 2016. PALEOMAP PaleoAtlas for GPlates and the PaleoData Plotter Program. PALEOMAP Project. doi:10.5281/zenodo.10251792
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

750 Ma

Present · 0 Ma