Back in time
Continental drift
The plates that carry the continents, moving on a globe from 1.8 billion years ago to now. It starts at Pangaea, 250 million years ago; press play and watch it break apart into today’s map.
Open the live mapWhat you see
- Tectonic plates and continents back to 1,800 million years ago.
- A 13-chapter story, from “Nuna gathers” to “Today”, with the camera following each chapter.
- Earth’s temperature and CO₂ over the last 485 million years.
- The geological periods along the timeline. “Go to” takes “250 Ma” or a name such as “Jurassic”.
Where the data comes from
- Cao et al. 2024A full-plate tectonic model reaching back 1.8 billion years, published under CC BY 4.0.
- PhanDA (Judd et al. 2024)Earth’s average temperature and CO₂ over the last 485 million years.
Published reconstructions; they change when the models are revised.
Good to know
- A model: the further back, the less certain the positions.
- Temperature and CO₂ cover only the last 485 million years.
Goes well with
Earth in the age of dinosaursThe continents as the dinosaurs knew them, on a 3D globe: Pangaea splitting in the Jurassic, the Atlantic opening, and the world 66 million years ago.
The world through historyAn interactive historical atlas: the world’s borders year by year from 3400 BCE, with wars, battles and other events from 7500 BCE, on a 3D globe.
Daily satellite imagesNASA’s daily true-colour images of the whole Earth from VIIRS and MODIS, back to February 2000, on a map that follows History and Replay to any day.