Back in time
Earth in the age of dinosaurs
Dinosaurs lived through more than 160 million years of moving continents. Open the map in the Jurassic, 150 million years ago, as Pangaea pulls apart, and play on to the end of the Cretaceous 66 million years ago.
Open the live mapWhat you see
- The plates and continents at any moment, with the geological period on the timeline.
- The young Atlantic widening between the Americas, Europe and Africa.
- Earth’s temperature and CO₂ through the Mesozoic.
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 of where the plates were, not a map of the dinosaurs themselves.
Goes well with
Continental driftWatch the continents move on a 3D globe, from the supercontinent Nuna 1.8 billion years ago through Pangaea to today, with a 13-chapter story along the way.
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.