What Did Earth Look Like

Warning: Flat Earthers and Evolution deniers may prefer to skip this hunt!

If you like science chances are that you know that the continental plates on earth are in a constant motion. Many, many moons ago most continents as we know them now were connected, were one: the supercontinent Pangaea. But also Pangaea was an evolution.

We all know how our Earth looks today. Even flat earthers do because most of us have grown up and used an Atlas. We know where the Americas are, where Eurasia is, where Africa and the Pacific isles are.

Have you ever wondered where you would have lived millions of years ago tho? Where would your address have been in the Ediacaran or Triassic period?

Ian Webster built a small tool which simulates exactly that. With the tool you can search any address known by Google Maps and check where it would have been on Earth up to 750 million years ago.

From Ian Webster’s HN intro:

I built this by adapting GPlates (https://www.gplates.org), an academic project providing desktop software for geologists to investigate plate tectonic data. I’m amazed that geologists collected enough data to actually plot my home 750M years ago, so I thought you all would enjoy it too.

Even though plate tectonic models return precise results, you should consider the plots approximate (obviously we will never be able to prove correctness). 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.

So go still that curiosity of yours and maybe, who knows, we were even neighbors back in the day.

Go check it out now.

Bonus: the visualization is fully open sourced.