Where was your city 300 million years ago? Scientists have made an online map
Scientists have created an online tool that allows you to find out where your city was millions of years ago. The Paleolatitude.org service shows at what latitude the selected point of the Earth was located in the distant past - up to the time of the supercontinent Pangaea, about 320 million years ago.
Paleolatitude.org calculates not the appearance of an ancient city or landscape, but itspaleolatitude - its position relative to the equator and poles in the past. This is important because continents are constantly moving, and the area where a particular city is today could have been in a different climate zone millions of years ago.
Details
The new version of Paleolatitude.org 3.0 is based on a more detailed global palaeogeographic model. It takes into account not only large tectonic plates, but also complex mountain belts, small plates and fragments of extinct continents, traces of which are preserved in modern mountain systems.
For example, the Paleolatitude.org 3.0 calculation for Kiev shows that the territory of the capital of Ukraine has been changing its position relative to the equator for the last 320 million years. About 320 million years ago, it was almost at the equator - at about 5° north latitude. Then it gradually shifted northwards: about 280-260 Ma it was already in the region of 20-25°N, and by 220-200 Ma it reached about 45-50°N.
The maximum northern position of this territory, according to the chart for Kiev, reached about 190-200 Ma - about 52°N. Then it moved slightly southwards to 38-40°N about 150-130 Ma, after which it gradually moved back to its present position. Today, Kiev is located at about 50° N latitude.
To put it simply, the territory of present-day Kiev has "moved" from almost equatorial latitudes to temperate northern latitudes over hundreds of millions of years. Therefore, the climate here in different geological epochs could be quite different, because the area of the Earth's crust, where it is located today, was then located in a different climatic belt.
Why it matters
Latitude has a direct effect on climate: it affects the angle of incidence of the sun's rays, temperature, seasonality and living conditions. That's why it's important for scientists who study ancient rocks, plants and animals to understand where these finds were when they were formed, not just where they lie today.
The updated model helps to more accurately reconstruct ancient climate, continental movement and biodiversity history. For example, it can be useful for studying mass extinctions: which latitudes became uninhabitable first, where "refuges" for species were preserved, and how plants and animals migrated during climate change.
For the average user, the service is also interesting: it shows that familiar places on the map were not always where we are used to seeing them. Over geological time, cities, countries and entire continents have travelled a long way along with tectonic plates.
Backcountry
Paleolatitude can be calculated using data about the Earth's ancient magnetic field. Some minerals in rocks retain the direction of the magnetic field during formation, and it is related to latitude. Using such data, geologists reconstruct where the rock was millions of years ago.
The first version of Paleolatitude.org was described in PLOS One in 2015 and was able to calculate paleolatitudes for the last 200 million years. The new version 3.0 extends the calculations to 320 million years and increases the detail of the reconstructions.
Source
Paleolatitude.org 3.0, Utrecht palaeogeographic model and work Paleolatitude.org 3.0: a calculator for paleoclimate and paleobiology studies based on a new global paleogeography model. A description of the previous version of the calculator was published in PLOS One in 2015.