Some 240 million years
ago, the patch of land that would one day become the National Mall was part of
an enormous supercontinent known as Pangea. Encompassing nearly all of Earth’s
extant land mass, Pangea bore little resemblance to our contemporary planet.
Thanks to a recently released interactive map, however, interested parties can
now superimpose the political boundaries of today onto the geographic
formations of yesteryear—at least dating back to 750 million years ago.
The results are
intriguing: During the Early Triassic Epoch, the National Mall in Washington,
D.C., for example, was wedged almost directly adjacent to Mauritania, yet to be
separated from the Northwest African country by the vast waters of the Atlantic
Ocean.
Ancient Earth, the tool
behind this millennia-spanning visualization, is the brainchild of Ian Webster,
curator of the world’s largest digital dinosaur database. As Michael D’estries
reports for Mother Nature Network, Webster drew on data from the PALEOMAP
Project—spearheaded by paleogeographer Christopher Scotese, the initiative
tracks the evolving “distribution of land and sea” over the past 1,100 million
years—to build the map.
Users can input a
specific address or more generalized region, such as a state or country, and
then choose a date ranging from zero to 750 million years ago. Currently, the
map offers 26 timeline options, traveling back from the present to the
Cryogenian Period at intervals of 15 to 150 million years.
According to Gizmodo’s
George Dvorsky, Ancient Earth includes an array of helpful navigational
features, including toggle display options related to globe rotation, lighting
and cloud coverage. Brief descriptions of chosen time periods pop up on the
bottom left side of the screen, while a dropdown menu at the top right allows
users to jump to specific milestones in history, from the arrival of Earth’s
first multicellular organisms some 600 million years ago to early hominids’
relatively belated emergence around 20 million years ago.
To switch from one time
period to another, you can either manually choose from a dropdown menu or use
your keyboard’s left and right arrow keys. Start at the very beginning of the
map’s timeline, Michele Debczak advises for Mental Floss, and you’ll see the
planet evolve from “unrecognizable blobs of land” to the massive supercontinent
of Pangea and, finally, the seven continents we inhabit today.
Fast Company’s Jesus
Diaz outlines several insights revealed by Ancient Earth: 750 million years
ago, for instance, Midtown Manhattan was situated at the center of a giant icy
landmass. As the description on the side of the map explains, “Glaciers may
have covered the entire planet during the [Cryogenian Period], the greatest ice
age known on Earth.” Flash forward to 500 million years ago, Debczak adds, and
New York City pops up as a tiny island in the southern hemisphere, while
London, still part of Pangea, appears almost directly adjacent to the South
Pole.
“I'm amazed that
geologists collected enough data to actually plot my home 750 [million] years
ago, so I thought you all would enjoy it too,” Webster writes in a comment on
Hacker News.
He is quick to point
out, however, that the visualizations should be considered approximate despite
the fact that plate tectonic models return precise results.
“Obviously we will
never be able to prove correctness,” Webster concludes. “In my tests I found
that model results can vary significantly. I chose this particular model
because it is widely cited and covers the greatest length of time.”
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