Madrid 300 million years ago
Our big house Land , has a whopping 4.543 million years . In that time, it has witnessed the creation of life, the extinction of the dinosaurs, the Industrial Revolution, the lifting of borders... so many advances (and setbacks) of which it has been an active part but also an observer. passive.
However, beyond the current political organization, she has a lot to say . She does it with the incessant movement of her plates and her constant evolution. Quietly but unstoppably.
** This map **, created by ** Ian Webster **, a software engineer who has trained at Google and NASA, aims to put the spotlight on the history of the Earth exemplifying it with the places of our day to day. And teach, in one fell swoop, what was happening on our planet millions of years ago.
Madrid during the Cretaceous
How? Playing. The Ancient Earth Globe It is a tool for us to investigate and so that, through a simple search engine, we know where our house was located (or any other address that we want) in the geological eras and stages through which the Earth has passed.
Where was Madrid during the Cretaceous? And New York when the first reptiles appeared? What happens to Cabo de Gata in that macrocontinent called Pangea? And the address of our trusted bakery at the time of the appearance of the first hominids? And your house 750 million years ago or at the time of the dinosaurs?
Your Creator, Ian Webster , is 28 years old and currently works as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Zenysis Technologies (San Francisco) , company dedicated to providing analytical tools to developing countries in order to improve their health and sanitation systems.
Why create a map like this? "Geologists have collected an impressive amount of data about the world; thanks to science it is possible to map a current city 750 million years ago . It can be difficult to understand and conceive of all the natural processes that the Earth has been subjected to for hundreds of millions of years...so I wanted to create an educational tool that would serve as a showcase for all this knowledge ", comments Ian Webster to Traveler.es.
Cabo de Gata during the creation of Pangea
Webster tells Traveler.es that this project was born with a purely educational objective: "I want people to learn that the Earth has such a great past that it defies our imagination. Humanity is insignificant on this geological and temporal scale . We must celebrate humanity, but also try to understand our natural environment. This map helps to connect people with something that is very familiar to them (their addresses) with the most distant past of the Earth ".
HOW CAN WE JOIN THE REMOTE PAST THROUGH A MAP?
In Ancient Earth Globe you can choose the direction you want in the cursor that is in the upper left corner of the screen.
From there, you have two search options: by selecting the age of the Earth in the upper center console **(you can go back from the present day to 750 million years ago) ** or through its different geological phases and historical landmarks in the search engine on the right (Pangea, the appearance of the first vertebrates...) .
Turin during the time of the dinosaurs was WATER
Once you perform the search, your address will be indicated with a pink dot. Overlaid, you will be able to see the current map of the world to make it easier to understand the map. At the bottom, an explanatory text about the selected moment in Earth's history will appear.
If you use your keyboard's forward and backward dates **() **, you can see, with a simple click, the evolution of the Earth with the explanation of each of its stages.
All this is possible thanks to the huge database stored in the ** Christopher Scotese PALEOMAP project **, from where Webster extracted the information on the movement of tectonic plates. With it, he continues to work on updating maps to improve the display and detail of **Ancient Earth Globe**. "We are also working to to incorporate other layers of information to the map , adding more time slots for users to browse," says Ian Webster.