The world’s first “Earth Time Lapse” shows continents that have moved over the past 100 million years – find your ancient home on the map

A stunning new time-lapse has revealed how scientists believe continents have shifted in “unprecedented” detail over the past 100 million years.

Earth’s surface animation shows tectonic plates rolling across the planet to create volcanoes, sea basins, and mountains.

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Scientists have studied the topography of the earth for generations.

All current knowledge of tectonic plates, erosion and precipitation has been applied to a state-of-the-art model published by the University of Sydney.

The viewer can watch as millions of years pass in seconds as a vast chunk of land transforms into what we now know as the seven continents.

Huge chunks of the earth’s crust can be seen diving among themselves to create volcanoes and earthquakes.

Precipitation, essential to the transformation of the world over the years, is also highlighted in the model.

Rain and snow alter the levels of carbon dioxide in the air, creating a feedback loop between the land and the atmosphere.

“Although the dance of the continents has been studied extensively, we are still limited in our understanding and representation of how the Earth’s surface evolved,” said Tristan Salles, a senior lecturer in geosciences at the University of Sydney who wrote about the model live science.

“What we bring with this new model is a way to assess how this surface has changed (globally and across geologic timescales), shaped by its interactions with the atmosphere, hydrosphere, tectonics and mantle dynamics.”

The model begins about 100 million years ago.

Pangea, thought to be a combination of the continents now known as North America, Africa, South America, and Europe, began drifting apart 200 million years ago.

The viewer can see that there is a small amount of space between the pieces of land when the model begins.

The blue areas represent water flow, while the red areas highlight sediments deposited by erosion.

“This unprecedented high-resolution model of Earth’s recent past will give geoscientists a more complete and dynamic understanding of the Earth’s surface,” said geologist Laurent Husson of the Institute of Earth Sciences in a statement opinion.

By depicting aspects such as tectonic movement, ocean currents and erosion, scientists gain a more holistic view of how the Earth became what it is today.

The researchers found that sediment was moving in much larger quantities than experts previously thought.

For example, sediments could have flowed into the ocean around 60 million to 30 million years ago due to the rise of the Himalayan Mountains and the Tibetan Plateau.

Salles says this is significant because some of the earliest life forms were thought to have originated in shallow pools of water containing sediments.

“It is thought that sedimentation flow may have provided a nutrient source for these early organisms, allowing them to thrive and evolve over time,” Salles said.

“We envision that our model could be used to test such long-standing hypotheses about the origin of life on Earth.”