Sources and method

This independent, open-source recreation of deeptime.pplx.app is built with Next.js, React, TypeScript, and Three.js. All application code, chapter writing, procedural sound, and landscape illustrations are newly authored.

The moving Earth

From 0 to 540 Ma, the globe uses 109 local, colorized PALEOMAP paleoelevation maps at 5-million-year spacing. Maps switch to the nearest frame; they do not represent a continuous tectonic simulation. Between 540 and 1,100 Ma, rotated plate polygons provide a lower-confidence continental outline. Earlier geography is explicitly artistic, not a reconstruction.

• Scotese & Wright (2018), PALEOMAP PaleoDEMs · CC BY 4.0. Colors and textures adapted here.
• Scotese PALEOMAP plate model · factual polygon and rotation tables, via the published reference data conversion.
• NASA Visible Earth, Blue Marble · modern Earth image; NASA imagery usage guidelines apply. No NASA endorsement is implied.
• Natural Earth · public-domain modern coastlines.

Atmosphere, climate, and life

• Scotese et al. (2021) · modeled global mean temperature, CC BY 4.0.
• van der Meer et al. (2022) · sea level and indicative ice latitude, CC BY 4.0.
• Paleo-CO₂ Data Archive · proxy medians, CC BY 4.0. Older values use published order-of-magnitude models.
• Krause et al. (2018), Berner (2009), and Lyons et al. (2014) · modeled oxygen, not direct measurements.
• Paleobiology Database · 0 sampled occurrence records, CC BY 4.0; this is not the complete fossil record. Fossils are plotted only when a plate reconstruction is available.
• GeoNames · 0 cities, CC BY 4.0. City locations are back-rotated with their containing plate; they are not historical settlements.

Reading the evidence

Ma means million years ago; Ga means billion years ago; ka means thousand years ago. The full-history timeline deliberately uses a nonlinear scale to make recent periods readable. The upper timeline gives finer control around the current age. Climate lines stop where data are unavailable; “unconstrained” is not zero. Ice is a latitude-based visualization, not a mapped reconstruction. The Last Glacial Maximum ice limit is an illustrative override.

Local assets and licensing

Imagery, maps, fonts, city coordinates, fossil records, coastlines, and climate tables are bundled locally. Cormorant Garamond is distributed under the SIL Open Font License. Unknown-license reference videos, proprietary code, and editorial prose were not redistributed. The complete asset provenance is in the repository attribution document.

Controls

Drag the globe to rotate and scroll or pinch to zoom. Drag either timeline to change age; click a gold marker for a chapter. Focus the lower timeline and use arrow keys (Shift for larger steps), Home for the formation of Earth, or End for today. Space toggles playback. Escape closes panels.