PALEOMAP Project: Mapping the movement of the earth, past and future

July 3, 2017 3:29 PM

The PALEOMAP project produces paleogreographic maps illustrating the Earth's plate tectonic, paleogeographic, climatic, oceanographic and biogeographic development from the Precambrian to the Modern World, then projecting what the world might look like millions of years into the future. The website is a bit dated, and some of the links have broken over the years, but you can dig into Archive.org and find free stuff and other old materials. Oh, and there are the videos on YouTube, which includes an animation of the plate tectonic movement, past and future, and paleomagnetic poles through time.

PALEOMAP is a project by Christopher Scotese, who retired from teaching at the University of Texas, Arlington, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences in 2013, and he is now a Research Associate at the Field Museum of Natural History and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Northwestern University.

posted by filthy light thief (7 comments total)

The main website was posted twice previously:
- Pangea Ultima, Dec. 7, 2000
- They Rule (many atlas/map sites), Nov. 2, 2001
but that was before YouTube.
posted by filthy light thief at 3:31 PM on July 3, 2017

Ooh, very cool! I've been looking for videos like these.

Thanks!
posted by kristi at 10:06 PM on July 3, 2017

Perhaps unintentionally, his site also presents a midden in which to explore the geologic periods of the World Wide Web.
posted by gwint at 10:00 AM on July 4, 2017 [1 favorite]

Seeing India break free of what became Antartica in that animation of plate tectonic movement, and then zoom up and smack into the underbelly of Asia gave me an unprecedently visceral appreciation of the forces that raised the Himalayas so high.
posted by jamjam at 12:50 PM on July 4, 2017

(I really should have paid more attention to that ed it window)
posted by jamjam at 3:39 PM on July 4, 2017

The whole Indian subcontinent zooming up like that has always puzzled me: Why does it move so fast when everything else is going along all doopy-doopy-doop? And from that animation, it seems there are parts of the Himalayas that have been frozen/under snow cover since more than 240 million years ago, which if true would be fascinating--wouldn't it? Like for core samples or something? Does anyone know if that's the case?
posted by miss patrish at 4:36 PM on July 4, 2017

A lot of the links are dead. None of the GIS stuff is available anymore.
posted by Oh_Bobloblaw at 9:02 AM on July 5, 2017