New Digital Tool Lets You See Where Your Backyard Was Millions of Years Ago

Key Points:

• A new website, paleolatitude.org, developed by Earth scientists led by Douwe van Hinsbergen, allows users to track the latitudinal movement of any location on Earth over the past 320 million years using the Utrecht Paleogeography Model.
• The tool visualizes changes in latitude but does not show longitudinal shifts or provide animated continental drift, focusing on the tectonic plate movements since the era of the supercontinent Pangaea.
• The model includes detailed reconstructions of previously unmodeled, highly deformed regions such as the Caribbean, Himalayas, and Mediterranean, helping researchers link rocks to their original tectonic plates even if those plates have since disappeared into the mantle.
• Paleolatitude.org is valuable for paleoclimatologists and paleontologists by providing context on ancient climates and biodiversity shifts, aiding studies on how species and environments changed with continental drift and mass extinction events.
• Future plans include creating maps showing fossil species distributions relative to shifting continents and climate zones, enhancing understanding of Earth's geological and biological history.