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What did Earth look like X million years ago?
- causality0 4y agoThis is great in theory but in practice we just don't have enough fossils for it to be truly interesting. It's more like "Which dinosaurs lived seven hundred miles away from your hometown?"
- throwaway743 4y agoNot seeing any dinosaur info on mobile. Using Android and FF browser
- gus_massa 4y agoIf I change the date in the top right, does it change the list of dinosaurs or just change the map? It would be nice to show small pictures of the dinosaurs instead of just links to the main page of each dinosaur (that has a few pictures).
- dtagames 4y agoIt doesn't seem to. It does, however, change the epoch description in the bottom left, which is well-written and informative. The arrow keys are cool for moving through eras.
- moffkalast 4y agoFish, apparently.
- bronikowski 4y agoOnly 600 millions years ago my Central European city was a beach front to the mega-Ocean. Would be sweet to see it but the lack of infrastructure could get annoying. Very fun project.
- duxup 4y agoThe in and out shallow seas in N. America provide a lot of beachfront ... under water ... beach front and on and off again activity. Amazing how much a few hundred million years will change things.
- m0ngr31 4y agoFor living in "Dinosaurland", the list of dinosaurs that lived near me is pretty low
- Ensorceled 4y agoSame with anything around the Badlands in Albert ... 2 or 3 listed.
- afrcnc 4y agoOk boyz... we're going digging in the weekend then!
- gwbas1c 4y agoIt it doesn't answer the question, "Which dinosaurs lived in my hometown?" Seriously, I clicked on the link thinking I'd be able to get a list of the dinosaurs that are believed to have lived in my hometown. As cool as this link is, it doesn't answer "Which dinosaurs lived in my hometown?"
- cududa 4y agoGood to know it wasn't just me who couldn't find an option to answer the actual thing it purports to tell you
- Ensorceled 4y agoApparently 0 dinosaurs roamed the area around Toronto, Ontario. We weren't even underwater at the time.
- OJFord 4y agoOthers are commenting like it does though, I couldn't get a dinosaur list either fwiw.
- Ensorceled 4y agoDepends on the place. Enter a town/city where dinosaurs fossils were found and it will show a couple. But even the few fossil hotbeds I checked will only show 2 or 3.
- manachar 4y agoIf you enter a place it will provide a list of fossils potentially nearby. It seems limited and not quite as cool as as say, showing a field guide of dinos in your area during a time period.
- chucksta 4y agoThats what it does, you can adjust the year at the top
- 4y ago
- throwaway290 4y agoI can't help but take depictions of dinosaurs like https://dinosaurpictures.org/Streptospondylus-pictures https://dinosaurpictures.org/Streptospondylus-pictures at face value, until I catch myself and remember they may be quite wrong considering we are limited to fossils: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/science-meets-speculation-in-all-your-yesterdays https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/science-m... (tl;dr https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/natashaumer/dinosaur-animals https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/natashaumer/dinosaur-an...).
- 99_00 4y agoAnyone else love Dino Dana?
- smm11 4y agoThere must have been a lot in Los Angeles, given the oil derricks. All that liquid T-Rex goodness. No idea where this hunk of land was 60+ million years ago.
- takinola 4y agoYou're probably just making a joke but in case others are wondering, your SUV is almost certainly not powered by liquified T-Rexs. Instead, most hydrocarbons we have today come from plants ie plankton-like creatures. Also, the position of hydrocarbons is not dictated by the population at that point in time on the earth's surface. Instead, think of the earth like a giant porous sponge with the occasional impervious rock formation that traps the liquid. The hydrocarbons accumulate in those traps over time and lead to the reservoirs we now tap for oil.
- necovek 4y agoI like how this has former Yugoslavia (including Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Serbia and Macedonia) borders :) Belgrade only got rid of the water when dinosaurs were already extinct according to this.
- srcreigh 4y agoSee here for the dinosaurs by region [1] [1]: https://dinosaurpictures.org/ https://dinosaurpictures.org/
- superkuh 4y agoThanks! I wish this had a little finer geolocation than just "north america". The webgl site in the main link was a no-go.
- orthecreedence 4y agoThese are all renderings. Why no photos?
- fluctor 4y agoPhotos of fossils?
- the_af 4y ago> These are all renderings. Why no photos? Alas! It would seem the Time Travel machine somehow erases the photos during the return trip, so renderings is all they can do.
- dredmorbius 4y agoIt's actually a licensing issue, it turns out. Some what complicated by jurisdictional and statutes of limitations issues.
- elvis70 4y agoIf you are using a computersaurus with a 4:3 screen like me, you will have to zoom in to get the list of fossils.
- Simon_O_Rourke 4y agoWe've still got AT&T and an IBM in my hometown, there's probably even a few PHP web-shops there too!
- vehemenz 4y agoPHP is more like birds. Technically, they're dinosaurs, but they've evolved and stayed relevant after Perl, etc. went extinct.
- boringg 4y agoI believe you mean they are more like pterosaurs
- sophacles 4y agoI bet they mean birds, aka modern dinosaurs. This is a good 'aka' because dinosaur made baby dinosaurs who grew up to make their own baby dinosaurs. Each generation was slightly different than the last and after millions of years, the baby dinosaurs were named birds!
- boringg 4y agoWell any dinosaur that existed and flew wasn't actually a dinosaur but rather a pterosaur. However I did a quick spot check and realize that modern day birds didn't evolved from pterosaurs but rather from dinosaurs surprised. So I stand corrected.
- whatever1 4y agoIf they were still around we would get to see Buffalo fried Fruitadens wings.
- termios 4y agonothing is showing up for me. luckily i already know the answer: bryozoans, bryozoans, and more bryozoans
- thamer 4y agoI also wasn't seeing anything, until I used "⌘ A" to select all text, and noticed that the list of animals or plants for the city I selected was displayed at the top left, in white text over a white background. Selecting all made it slightly more visible, enough for me to read the text. Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/VQjfvQZ.png https://i.imgur.com/VQjfvQZ.png
- typpo 4y agoThanks for the screenshot. There might some weird three.js/webgl thing going on, because that background is supposed to be black with stars. Any errors in the console? Just put out a potential fix.
- thamer 4y agoNo errors, but two regular log messages and two warnings: webParams: {startingYear: 260, surfacePoints: Array(0), camera: {…}} (warning) THREE.ImageUtils.loadTexture has been deprecated. Use THREE.TextureLoader() instead. > Jb.loadTexture @ three.min.js:990 > createSphere… lastAddressFailed true (warning) THREE.ImageUtils.loadTexture has been deprecated. Use THREE.TextureLoader() instead. > Jb.loadTexture @ three.min.js:990 > createClouds… Edit: I figured something was missing so I tried disabling uBlock Origin in case it was blocking some assets, but that didn't help.
- aksss 4y agoLame, no worky. Maybe cuz I’m browsing on a phone instead of computer? I get no list, the only thing that changes with time period is a general description.
- nawitus 4y agoTry another city. The site didn't show anything for my location.
- shagie 4y agoOne of the neat bits from this is going to 340 Mya and look at where the Appalachian mountain range runs. You can hike part of the Appalachian trail in Spain https://www.geologiadesegovia.info/the-international-appalachian-trail-spain-chapter/ https://www.geologiadesegovia.info/the-international-appalac... and Ireland https://iatulsterireland.com https://iatulsterireland.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Appalachian_Trail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Appalachian_Trai...
- divbzero 4y agoEarth’s land and water hemispheres [1] were particularly stark in contrast back in the time of the dinosaurs. Are there geological theories as to how the asymmetry formed? Could major impact events from astronomical objects have played a role? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_and_water_hemispheres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_and_water_hemispheres
- shagie 4y agoIn digging on it, Ancient Supercontinents and the Paleogeography of Earth looks to be an interesting book https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780128185339/ancient-supercontinents-and-the-paleogeography-of-earth https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780128185339/ancient-sup... This appears to be part of a geologic scale cycle - https://www.livescience.com/38218-facts-about-pangaea.html https://www.livescience.com/38218-facts-about-pangaea.html > The current configuration of continents is unlikely to be the last. Supercontinents have formed several times in Earth's history, only to be split off into new continents. Right now for instance, Australia is inching toward Asia, and the eastern portion of Africa is slowly peeling off from the rest of the continent. > Based on the emergence of other supercontinents in the Precambrian supereon (4.5 billion to 541 million years ago), it appears that supercontinents occur periodically every 750 million years, according to a 2012 study in the journal Gondwana Research (opens in new tab). > Most scientists believe that the supercontinent cycle is largely driven by circulation dynamics in the mantle, according to a 2010 article in the Journal of Geodynamics (opens in new tab). Water/land hemispheres would then be an artifact of that cycle. Given that cycle, it will happen again - https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-think-earth-s-next-supercontinent-might-look-like-one-of-these https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-think-earth-s-next-s...
- asveikau 4y agoI think it's interesting that at 260 million years ago, Europe and the eastern US seem to be at relatively the same distance as today (maybe a little closer), but you have most of Africa wedged in the middle of them.
- dataspun 4y agoequivalent to spam in its current iteration
- orthecreedence 4y agoI always think the waves on Pangea's coast must have been huge. All that wind blowing and no continents to stop the waves from forming.
- manthedudeguy 4y ago
- divbzero 4y agoAre there sci-fi stories with the premise that a character wakes up transported to a different planet except it’s later revealed that it’s actually Earth in a distant time?
- drfuchs 4y ago[Spoiler Alert:] Original 1968 “Planet of the Apes”? It's a great visual reveal in the last moments of the film; no dialog needed.
- rspeele 4y agoThe whole series of movies (well, the pre-2000 iterations) was recently free to watch on YouTube. They're all cheesy but the original one holds up reasonably well. Feels like a movie-length version of a classic Twilight Zone episode, which makes sense, considering Rod Serling wrote the first draft of the film's script.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago> It's a great visual reveal in the last moments of the film; no dialog needed. Dialog is present and very famous, though. ("You maniacs! You blew it up!")
- drfuchs 4y agoI’d argue that those lines were mysterious until the subsequent closing shot that functions as the visual punch line. At least ten-year-old me didn’t get the earlier hints.
- slobiwan 4y agoYou mean besides Planet of the Apes?
- dilippkumar 4y agoNot quite what you are looking for, but the Malazan series has some stories spanning extremely large time scales through which multiple intelligent species evolve into existence and fade away. It is by far, the best series I've read. Book 1 is hard to get into, and doesn't reward the reader as much, but stick with the series. It's worth it.
- pachico 4y agoCould not resolve location for "Barcelona, Catalonia, ES" :(
- ninth_ant 4y agoThat’s what it says for my hometown unless I switch to a more recent year. The error message is a bit confusing I think, the tip to change the year isn’t super obvious. Interestingly, Barcelona doesn’t show up until you hit 0 years ago, so perhaps it’s location is extremely recent on the tectonic scale?
- gerdesj 4y agoReally. It found Yeovil (UK) which is smaller than your neighbour - BDN!
- jasim 4y agoThere have never been dinosaurs in my town. We've always maintained a big board in both local and regional languages that said "DINOSAURS KEEP OUT".
- kristopolous 4y agoIt'd be nice if it followed land and not just location. I'm sure it's more complicated then I think, but this model is kinda silly
- gerdesj 4y agoBloody plate tectonics! When you watch geo[thingie] at this speed you start to appreciate how there is no such thing as terra firma. Take the UK and Ireland - thanks to sea level changes it expands and contracts pretty madly and that's only change in one dimension. At several points it was part of the European land mass and faster than you can say Brexit the Dogger bank floods over and Neanderthals got wet feet. If you also tried to follow land, you'd have to account for subduction and whatever the opposite of that is on continental scales and land created by volcanoes and lost by volcanoes exploding etc on a smaller scale.
- kristopolous 4y agoAbsolutely. I'm certainly not a geologist and I know it's clearly not a 1:1 mapping, but certainly some thing can be said about, say the India shaped floating land mass that drifts towards where India is located in the past 100 million years and if you wanted to say where Mumbai was, the answer, if there is one, is probably found somewhere on that giant island and not at the exact place it is today There should be something better than this.
- typpo 4y agoHi HN, I built this. It's been posted several times before, so I can answer some common questions: How does this work? I adapted GPlates [1], an academic project that creates desktop software for geologists to investigate plate tectonic data. Is the geocoding accurate? Even though plate tectonic models return precise results, you should consider the plots approximate within ~100km. In my tests I found that model results can vary significantly. I chose this model because it is widely cited and covers the greatest length of time. How should I interpret the maps/colors? The graphics that wrap the globe are provided by Dr. Christopher Scotese, a geologist who runs the PALEOMAP project. You can learn more about the project and the creation of the rasters here [2]. You might also notice some old national borders. I just work with what I can get! Why can't it look up my location? Your location probably didn't exist at the time, geologically speaking. Try switching to closer to present day (e.g. 66 Mya) Where are all the dinosaurs? Despite the title of this post, the visualization isn't really meant to show an exhaustive list of dinosaurs or fossils (the list doesn't even show on mobile). If you want to dig into data on fossils near you, check out the Paleobiology Database Navigator [3]. [1] https://www.gplates.org https://www.gplates.org [2] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-q0WIa7ofISFHyBe4UxvN8DIPs82SPmS/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-q0WIa7ofISFHyBe4UxvN8DIPs8... [3] https://paleobiodb.org/navigator/ https://paleobiodb.org/navigator/
- davelacy 4y agoThis is one of the coolest web apps I've seen... awesome work!
- nsrose7224 4y agoThis is really cool, where is SnowBall earth at ~700M years ago though? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth
- 323 4y agoIs the rotation lock when viewing North/South Pole intentional? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimbal_lock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimbal_lock
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- tiffanyh 4y agoI never realized until seeing this 3D globe that literally an entire side of the earth only had water. I've seen drawings of Pangaea before but never in a 3-dimensional sphere. Just interesting to see and entire 1/2 of the earth with nothing but ocean. I wonder how common this is on other planets.
- padobson 4y agoWe're not too far off right now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_and_water_hemispheres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_and_water_hemispheres
- 323 4y agoI remember reading about how it's periodic, continents split apart then come together again in a cycle. Not in the same configuration obviously.
- ineedasername 4y agoTo be pedantic about it, nearly 3/4 of the earth are still nothing but ocean!
- heckelson 4y agoI just had fun putting a pin into my hometown and discovering that it was at the equator at some point (300 mio years ago)!
- throwaway4837 4y agoDang, wish this title was updated to be less misleading. I spent way too long looking for functionality that didn't exist. The author (not same person as poster) posted in the comments: > Where are all the dinosaurs? Despite the title of this post, the visualization isn't really meant to show an exhaustive list of dinosaurs or fossils (the list doesn't even show on mobile). That said, this is a really cool visualization of how the water fill and plates evolved over time. Love it!
- dang 4y agoIf anyone wants to suggest a more accurate and neutral title, we can maybe change it. I don't understand what's wrong with the current title ("Which dinosaurs lived in your hometown?") Edit: I think I get it now and have changed the title above.
- rufus_foreman 4y agoPat Buchanan.
- sammalloy 4y agoCretaceous FTW. Looks like I’ll need to keep working on my time machine.
- ggm 4y agoPath trace of continental drift for chosen point, across some time window?
- eslaught 4y agoReading through the descriptions of each time period, it suddenly struck me that I had no idea Earth had so many mass extinctions. It's a bit mind-blowing that the one that put an end to the dinosaurs was not even the worst (by percentage of species killed off). I also somehow hadn't appreciated that multi-cellular animals existed before multi-cellular plants.
- RadixDLT 4y agowatch Prehistoric Planet - Season 1 to find out
- unixhero 4y agoThey all ran Xfree86