The arrangement of Earth’s continents has changed over hundreds of millions of years. The reconstruction shows the supercontinent Pangea, which formed around 290 million years ago. Lorenzo Pasqualini meteorized Italy September 30, 2023 3:00 p.m. 4 min
for years, We are used to using maps and satellite photos of our planet to travel, get around, and find places of interest. From the famous “Google Maps” and “Google Earth” to thousands of other cartographic platforms, The Internet allows us to explore global cartography through a computer or mobile phone.
What if you could also navigate the cartography of Earth’s past? and discover what it looked like tens and hundreds of millions of years ago? That was the name of a project paleo maps, that allows you to discover something how our planet has changed over the course of geological ages.
Paleomaps, what did the Earth used to look like?
PaleoAtlas PALEOMAP is a free web tool that allows you to view and navigate 91 paleogeographic maps from the Phanerozoic (the era we are in, which began about 542 million years ago) to the end of the Neoproterozoic. A drop-down menu at the top of the page allows you to do this Choose the geological era that interests you and see what the planet looked like from 750 million years ago to today.
In the upper left corner, You can also write down the name of where you live and find out what your town or village looked like (and where it was). You will discover, for example, that 260 million years ago Rome (and all of Italy) lay at the bottom of a large ocean (the Tethys Ocean), an ocean that contained the sediments found today in the Apennines and the Alps finds. while other parts of future Europe (which was then still part of the supercontinent Pangea) had already emerged.
We can also discover what the planet looked like at the time of the dinosaurs and how its appearance has changed over time with the appearance and disappearance of new living species.
Browse paleomaps and discover what the Earth looked like hundreds of millions of years ago: Here is the paleomaps page.
In fact, you can choose which planet you want to navigate via a drop-down menu on the right at various important stages of the evolution of life, from the appearance of coral reefs (some of which can now be found in the rocks of our mountains!) to the appearance of the first vertebrates, from the extinction of the dinosaurs to the appearance of the first primates.
Paleogeographic maps in this navigable paleoatlas illustrate the ancient configuration of ocean basins and continents as well as key topographic and bathymetric features such as mountains, plains, shallow seas, continental shelves and deep oceans, which makes navigation even more interesting.
This major work is the result of the publication of paleogeographic maps by Christopher Scotese, whose graphic design was entrusted to Ian Webster.