About This Project

A free, interactive visualization of Earth's deep history

What Is the Pangea Map?

The Pangea Interactive Map is a free educational tool that lets you explore 540 million years of continental drift, from the Cambrian explosion all the way to the present day. You can watch Earth's landmasses slowly collide to form the supercontinent Pangea, then break apart into the continents we know today.

You can also search for any country and see where it was located at any point in Earth's history, or plot where a dinosaur species lived, overlaid on the ancient geography of the time.

The Data Behind It

The paleogeographic reconstructions are powered by GPlates, an open-source plate tectonics software developed by a collaboration of universities and research institutions. GPlates provides scientifically peer-reviewed models of how the tectonic plates have moved over geological time.

We also use PaleoDEM elevation data to show ancient ocean depths and mountain ranges, giving a richer sense of what Earth's surface actually looked like at each point in time.

Why We Built It

We were fascinated by the question: where was my country during Pangea? There were existing tools, but none that felt simple, fast, and beautiful enough for casual curiosity. So we built one.

This is a side project made with love for science and history. It is completely free to use, with no sign-up required.

Technical Details

The map is built with Astro and D3.js. Paleogeographic coastline data is fetched live from the GPlates Web Service API. The dinosaur dataset is sourced from the Paleobiology Database.