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I am looking for a paleogeographic atlas software, like the one used here at min 10:15: you can navigate through the ages with an arrow and visualize a reconstruction of the geographic features of any area of the world in a certain age:

enter image description here

Has anyone got any suggestion? I use Linux (Debian) but I'm interested in software for any operating system.

Jan Doggen
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Self-teaching worker
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    We don't really do shopping / recommendation questions; and readers will rarely want to wade through a video to find crucial information: it's best to include all relevant information, maybe including a screenshot, within the body of the question. We do have a sister site that does [softwarerecs.se]. But please note that they have very specific requirements for how questions are asked. – 410 gone Sep 02 '14 at 13:41
  • Thank you very much for the suggestion!!! Added screenshot. I'm inclined to think that paleogeographical atlases are likely to be used by a larger fraction of this site's users (geoscience students etc.) than of the generical software experts there... – Self-teaching worker Sep 02 '14 at 14:32

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I haven't seen the video you linked to, but from personal experience GPlates is pretty good. It's open-source and runs on Windows, Linux and MacOS X.

stevej
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  • Thank you so much!!! I've downloaded it and the plate polygons at http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~gurnis/GPlates/gplates.html . Is there any set of data for Gplates with more detailed geographical maps? I'd like to navigate through ages to study the paleogeography of Europe and the Mediterranean basin, but the whole planet would be even better... – Self-teaching worker Sep 02 '14 at 14:26
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    No problem. Sorry, I'm not too sure about more data; I just sat in on a training session a couple of years ago, I've never actually used it for proper work. I think the data I used is also linked on the GPlates website, either the EarthByte or 'official' GPlates data sets. I suppose you could find some paleogeography maps from the literature and digitise them yourself :)

    Links are here: http://www.earthbyte.org/Resources/earthbyte_gplates_data_sources.html http://www.earthbyte.org/Resources/earthbyte_gplates_data_sources.html http://www.ngu.no/geodynamics/gplates/

     – stevej Sep 03 '14 at 04:10
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+1 for GPlates, but if you happen to be an ArcGIS user (I was once, but I'm better now), then the PaleoGIS plugin is pretty good. Skimming through their material I can't tell if there's any other way to run it, but I don't think there is.

Matt Hall
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Also, for a very simple visualization application for plate tectonics and a lot of other information, you can use EarthViewer. It is extremely intuitive and the related Earth History data helps to frame the changes.

arkaia
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