Earth, with its convincingly familiar continents, arranged in a reliable configuration that you know and love, does not always look like it does today.
The masses of its land, once closed together in the supercontinent, have broken and broken and drifted away from each other, and have come together again and again during the 4.5 ..- billion year history of our planet.
In a sense, so your hometown location is more globetrotting than you have. And, thanks to a nice interactive website that has been circulating recently, you can also find out how much that place has changed over hundreds of millions of years.
It’s called the Ancient Earth Globe, which was launched a few years ago by paleontologist Ian Webster. It combines paleographic graphic maps developed as part of the PalaeoMPS project – led by geologist and paleogeographer Christopher Schutz – and developed by GPLTS. No data, which is an open source repository of geological science data.
“I’m amazed that geologists collected enough data to actually plot my home 750 million years ago, so I thought you’d all enjoy it too.” Webster wrote in 2018 on Hacker News.
“Although plate tectonic models give accurate results, you should consider the plots approximately (obviously we will never be able to prove accuracy.) In my tests I found that the results of the model can vary significantly. I chose this particular model. Because it’s widely quoted and covers the best length of time. “
With the help of a combined tool, you can go back to the original re5050 million years ago and reclaim the earth. It is not a complete history of the planet, but it has four supercontinents – Panotia, Gondwana, Lorentia and Pangea.
When you open the map, it defaults to 240 million years ago – the Middle Triassic period, when Pengia dominated the world, when we know it emerged. Life was returning from the catastrophic Permian-Triassic extinction event about 10 to 12 million years ago, and dinosaurs and mammals once again prospered.
(Ian Webster / Ancient Earth)
You can explore what the world looked like at different events from the drop-down menu on the right, although according to Webster’s GitHub repository for the site, which was last updated five years ago, some information may be out of date. Now.
But you can also choose your own dates from the drop-down menu in the center; Moreover, in the upper left corner – this is the part you are waiting for – a text box allows you to input the location after which you can track the whole era, with lines marked to show the boundaries of today’s earth. Is.
“My software software ‘Geocodes’ uses (Scottish) models to run back and forth to the user’s location in a timely manner,” the website told CNN. Can. “
Zooming back in time and watching your hometown under the waves or the gradual appearance of mountain ranges that you recognize as you move forward is really enjoyable. And it’s a nice reminder that nothing – not even our beautiful planet – is the same.
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