Monday 2 August 2021

You can see exactly where your hometown would have been while dinosaurs were on Earth using this digital globe

Earth
When the first dinosaurs began roaming Earth 220 million years ago, New York City was far closer to Morocco than it is today.
  • A digital globe makes it possible to see where your hometown would have been 750 million years ago.
  • Scientist Ian Webster was the brains behind the digital globe.
  • The globe shows how much change Earth has experienced over hundreds of millions of years.
  • See more stories on Insider's business page.

Planet Earth is 4.5 billion years old. While 750 million years may seem like nothing in relation to its age, a lot of can change in the space of 750 million years.

300 million years ago the world consisted of just one single continent: Pangaea - 200 to 150 million years ago it started to split into two parts: Laurasia and Gondwana.

With time and a very slow shifting of our tectonic plates, our planet morphed into what it is today.

A digital globe rendering of the Ancient Earth makes it possible to see where your hometown would have been 750 million years ago - 150 million years before the first multi-cellular life forms developed.

Using data from a software platform called G-Plates, scientist Ian Webster created a digital globe where you can see where and when you would have lived at various points in Earth's history.

The map consists of 91 paleogeographic maps spanning the Phanerozoic and late Neoproterozoic periods, illustrating the ancient configuration of the ocean basins and continents, as well as important features including mountains, shallow sea, and deep oceans.

We searched where New York City would have been at different stages throughout history - the pale pink marker shows where New York City would have been.

Devonian Period. Life on land becomes more complex as plants develop. Insects diversify and fish develop sturdy fins, which eventually evolve into limbs. The first vertebrates walk on land. Oceans and coral reefs host a diverse range of fish, sharks, sea scorpions, and cephalopods.
At this stage, life on land was becoming more complex as plants developed. Fish developed sturdy fins that eventually evolved into limbs.

Around 400 million years ago, the first vertebrates began walking on land. The Earth's landscape looked very different to how it does now.

Middle Triassic. The Earth is recovering from the Permian-Triassic extinction. Small dinosaurs begin to appear. Therapsids and archosaurs emerge, along with the first flying vertebrates.
At this stage, small dinosaurs were beginning to appear on Earth, along with the first flying vertebrates.

When the first dinosaurs began roaming Earth 220 million years ago, New York City was far closer to Morocco than it is today.
Mammals and birds continue to evolve into modern forms. Early hominids emerge in Africa. Use the ← and → keys to step through time Paleogeographic maps by C.R. Scotese, visualization developed by Ian Webster · Details » 20 million years ago
20 million years ago, the first hominids were emerging in Africa.

While the continents of North America and South America may look a lot more familiar than the previous landscapes, hominids were only just starting to appear at this stage.

Researchers have suggested that the Earth's plates will eventually meld into a "supercontinent" in roughly 300 million years, which they've dubbed Amasia.

Read the original article on Business Insider


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