Today's cities on a globe of Earth's tectonic past and future
A rotatable Earth that drags today's countries and major cities through the Merdith 2021 plate reconstruction model, plus a simple future extrapolation. Continents keep their color families while the land follows plate motion from 1000 million years ago to 250 million years ahead.
Today's cities on a globe of Earth's tectonic past and future launched on August 9, 2026 with 37 votes, #644 of 23,274 launches that month and more than 95% of that year's launches.
In plain words
This interactive globe visualizes Earth's tectonic history and future by rotating today's countries and cities through 1 billion years of plate motion using the Merdith 2021 reconstruction model. Users can explore continental drift from the past through the present to a speculative 250 million years ahead, with land masses following realistic plate movements while maintaining their continental color groupings. The tool is designed for anyone curious about geology, Earth science, or how geography has transformed over deep time.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
Today's countries and cities are used as colored crust markers. Country polygons are split by the present-day static polygons from the Merdith 2021 plate model, then each country-on-plate fragment is reconstructed backward with pyGPlates finite rotations. The future side is a constant-motion extrapolation from young plate rotations with a few coarse collision handoffs, so treat it as an interactive sketch rather than a forecast. Red areas mark plate fragments that still overlap after reconstruction. Half Moon tonight. (At least it's better than no Moon atfrom douwe.com
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