Earth at 200 Ma
Jurassic- Chosen place
- Rome
- Then
- —
- Travelled
- —
- Crust
- —
- World
- Pangaea separating
- Model
- Müller 2022
The highlighted point follows the crust beneath the chosen place.
IThe wandering continents
Five stops through 250 million years. Choose one to return the globe to that reconstruction.
IIWhere was this place?
Latitude of the chosen crust from 250 million years ago to today. Tap the chart to pick a time.
The point on the globe follows the plate, not a modern border.
Present-day coordinates are attached to moving crust, then carried backward through a sequence of finite rotations from the Müller et al. 2022 model.
Broad arrangement is better constrained than every coastline, inland sea or small fragment. Positions are a reconstruction, not a photograph.
IIIWhat the drawing knows
Present-day Natural Earth outlines, filled and rotated with their plates — the world as it was then.
Today’s outline, dashed in red, so you can tell then from now.
The path of a present-day location carried backward with its plate.
The rotations are Müller, Flament, Cannon, Tetley, Williams, Cao, Bodur, Zahirovic and Merdith, 2022, a tectonic-rules mantle reference frame since 1 billion years ago. Its relative plate motions and plate outlines come from Merdith et al. 2021, and the crust names are the model’s own. This page uses 0–250 Ma. Deep-time maps are reconstructions: their broad arrangement is better known than every shoreline.