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New Paleolatitude 3.0 Tool Lets You Trace Any Location’s Latitude Back 320 Million Years

The public tool uses rock magnetism to fix past latitudes with higher precision.

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© Aris Suwanmalee G via Shutterstock
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Location of The Netherlands (pink) in Pangaea, 258 million years ago. Brown: Current continental crust above water Light brown: Thinned and reconstructed continental crust, mostly submerged Dark brown: Cratons/very old continental crust Light blue: Oceanic crust Dark blue: Thickened oceanic crust due to volcanism

Overview

  • The Utrecht-led team, which published the model in PLOS One on Wednesday, released a free web calculator at Paleolatitude.org.
  • The site returns the past latitude of any spot on Earth back to the era of Pangea about 320 million years ago.
  • The upgraded model adds movements of small plates and long-lost continents like Greater Adria and Argoland, improving how rocks are linked to their original plates.
  • Researchers first reconstruct how plates moved by virtually unfolding mountain belts, then use magnetic signals in dated rocks to place those plates at the correct past latitudes.
  • The higher resolution supports studies of climate and biodiversity through deep time, and the team plans to push the model back toward the Cambrian about 550 million years ago.