Forget time travel.
Time Warp
Want to know what kind of dinosaur roamed your backyard eons ago? Short of hopping into a time machine, this fun interactive website features a 3D view of Earth and the option to see what the planet looked like during pivotal snapshots between 750 million years ago and the present.
The site, dubbed Ancient Earth and developed by Discord senior engineering manager Ian Webster, also gives you the option to plug in any town or city and plot it back to its location at any given time, plus nearby fossils.
As an example, if you plug in New York City and travel back to 750 million years ago, the map takes you to the Cryogenian Period, a time that some scientists think the planet was mostly covered with glaciers. A red dot will pinpoint the relative location of the city, which was once located in the approximate middle of the supercontinent Rodinia, a mashup of most of the Earth's landmass.
For New York City, for instance, the site explains that fossils found in the vicinity include the biped dinosaur Grallator, from the Cretaceous Period, and the Pteranodon, a winged monster from the Late Cretaceous.
Quantum Leap
You can also "travel" to notable firsts in the planet's history such as the appearance of the first green algae, the first insects, or the first dinosaurs.
Webster developed the interactive globe for the The Dinosaur Database, billed as the "internet's largest dinosaur database," back in 2018 and based it on GPlates, software that allows you to manipulate the planet's plate tectonics through various time periods.
"I'm amazed that geologists collected enough data to actually plot my home 750M years ago," Webster said when he first released the website to the public.
What's just as amazing, besides the interactivity, is that the website imparts upon you that humans take up an infinitesimal slice of geological time — which puts everything in perspective.
More on dinosaurs: Amazing Fossil Froze Dinosaur in Death Match With Prehistoric Monster
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