Paleolatitude.org can do that, right down to the movements of small tectonic and ‘lost continents’ now called Greater Adria, the Tethys Himalayas or Argoland, which we know as folded rocks in the mountain ranges of the Mediterranean, the Himalayas, and Indonesia.
Understanding geology is vital to understanding lots of other things, like climate of the past. If you examine the content of rocks and know latitude determines the angle of the sun's rays, you may make a determination about climate of the past - which is fine, unless the rock wasn't actually there. In Netherlands of 245 million years ago, it was more like the Persian Gulf than it is now; desert and tropical waters.
Our office has traveled 1,600 miles and never sent a postcard.
Old models stated that was due to global warming but it is instead the case that Netherlands and Arabia shared the same latitude.
The new model was created by incorporating how plates moved relative to one another, ‘unfolding’ folded rock in mountains caused by the shifting plates and laying them side by side. Then they had to determine the latitude.Because the angle formed by the Earth’s magnetic field and the surface changes gradually from the poles towards the equator, it is linked to latitude, so using using magnetic field information they determined the correct latitude. Without that, a whole lot of climate models about the past are wrong. Then, combined with aging, they can show movements made by rocks, and the tectonic platers underneath.
Right now their model goes all the way back to the supercontinent Pangaea, about 320 million years ago, but they hope to extend it to the ‘Cambrian explosion’ of complex life 550 million years ago.
Citation: van Hinsbergen DJJ, Vaes B, Boschman LM, Lom N, van de Lagemaat SHA, Advokaat EL, et al. (2026) Paleolatitude.org 3.0: A calculator for paleoclimate and paleobiology studies based on a new global paleogeography model. PLoS One 21(4): e0346817. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0346817
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