New interactive map lets you see where your home was 320 million years ago

The tool allows you to see how the latitude of any of the world has changed since the time of Pangea. It took 10 years to complete.

It works like a kind of prehistoric Google Maps: it allows you to enter any place on the planet and check how its altitude has changed over the last few years. 320 million yearswhen the continents moved on tectonic plates very different from those of today.

The tool can help put existing geological and paleontological data into one whole new perspective: A fossil left behind can be tracked not only through time but also in space, says the

The new model was based on the Utrecht Paleogeographic Modela reconstruction that allows us to follow the displacement of the Earth’s plates from the time of Pangea to the current map.

Its operation is accessible to any user. When entering a location on the website, a graph appears showing the variation in latitude over geological time.

320 to 200 million years agomost of the continents were united by Pangea. North America, Africa, South America and Europe formed a large continental mass before a system of fissures began to separate them.

This process opened volcanic zonesweakened the Earth’s crust and ended up favoring the formation of the Atlantic Ocean.

The platform can also be useful for paleoclimatologists, since latitude conditions the amount of solar radiation received and, therefore, the climate of a region.

“It was necessary 10 years and a lot of work by geologists to achieve this”, say experts. This phrase summarizes the complexity of a project that not only reconstructs large plates, but also deformed regions, such as the Caribbean, the Himalayas or the Mediterranean, where there were fragments of crust that ended up sinking into the Earth’s mantle.

This precision makes the map something more than a curiosity. The model makes it possible to relate current rocks to the plates on which they were formed, even when these plates no longer exist on the surface.

The interactive map also opens up new possibilities for paleontology. By crossing fossils, ancient latitudes and climate belts, researchers will be able to identify which areas became uninhabitable after mass extinctions and which served as refuges for certain species.

Finally, the team’s next objective is to create maps that show where these organisms lived and how they moved with the continents.