About Worlds Ago
Worlds Ago is a deep-time visualization of Earth. The timeline runs from 4.5 billion years ago to the present; pin a place on the globe, scrub through geological time, and watch where it drifted. Every moment is a linkable address — for example London at the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary.
How it works
At the Present, the globe shows live OpenStreetMap tiles with street-level zoom. Move into deep time and each slice swaps to a full-globe paleogeographic texture rendered from the PALEOMAP PaleoDEMs (6-arcminute elevation grids, 0–540 Ma in 5-million-year steps). When you pin a location, the GPlates Web Service reconstructs where that point sat at the chosen age, and a great-circle arc connects today’s position to its paleo-position.
The geological eras
Each era and period has its own page — open one, then jump straight into the globe at that age.
Macro eras
- Precambrian — 4.5 Ga – 541 Ma
- Paleozoic — 541 Ma – 252 Ma
- Mesozoic — 252 Ma – 66 Ma
- Cenozoic — 66 Ma – present
Phanerozoic periods
- Cambrian — 541 Ma – 485.4 Ma
- Ordovician — 485.4 Ma – 443.8 Ma
- Silurian — 443.8 Ma – 419.2 Ma
- Devonian — 419.2 Ma – 358.9 Ma
- Carboniferous — 358.9 Ma – 298.9 Ma
- Permian — 298.9 Ma – 252 Ma
- Triassic — 252 Ma – 201.4 Ma
- Jurassic — 201.4 Ma – 145 Ma
- Cretaceous — 145 Ma – 66 Ma
- Paleogene — 66 Ma – 23.03 Ma
- Neogene — 23.03 Ma – 2.58 Ma
- Quaternary — 2.58 Ma – present
Data sources
- PALEOMAP PaleoDEMs (Scotese & Wright 2018) — paleo-elevation grids, CC-BY 4.0.
- OpenStreetMap raster tiles — the modern world at Present, ODbL.
- GPlates Web Service (EarthByte) — plate reconstruction, MERDITH2021 model (0–1000 Ma).
Honest limits
No paleogeographic maps exist beyond 540 Ma, so the Precambrian shows a stylized eon view; no plate reconstruction exists beyond 1000 Ma. The Hadean and Archean carry era metadata only.