Find Out Which Dinosaurs Lived In Your Area Using This Interactive Map

You can explore between 20 million and 750 million years into the past.

We don’t tend to think about what may have happened in the recent past, let alone millions of years ago. We move about through our local area, feeling as if things are just as they have always been.

In reality, however, the ancient world lives below our feet. You may have to dig a little bit, but if you happen to dig in the right spot, you would be amazed at what you would find. Perhaps you may even be in an area where the Tyrannosaurus Rex reigned supreme! If you have ever wondered, there’s a map that can point you in the right direction.

The map, Ancient Earth Globe, is interactive and available online. Research can be done using the map to show what any part of the world might have looked like during prehistoric times. Ian Webster is a paleontologist who took advantage of a browser-based project using Experiments with Google. The end result is incredible.

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The map is accessible online and you can scroll back through time to see what the earth likely looked like. A drop-down menu can be selected, allowing you to go between 20 million and 750 million years into the past. You can also look for a location in the city name box and a red pin will show you where it is. Any fossils that were found in the area will be listed.

When you click on the list of nearby fossils and choose the name of a dinosaur, additional information will open in a new page. You can learn more about the dinosaur, its habitat, where other fossils were found, and even what it ate.

After the pin is dropped in your area, you can change the dates to see how the movement of tectonic plates changed the continents in relation to that location.

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According to CNN, Webster said this project does more than show you dinosaurs. It’s a piece of Earth’s history and can show you how things do change over time. Interestingly, the planet is still changing so 20 million years in the future, things will be quite different than they are today.

The map is available publicly, so anyone can use it to study and learn more about science and the earth.

“It is meant to spark fascination and hopefully respect for the scientists that work every day to better understand our world and its past,” Webster told CNN. “It also contains fun surprises, for example how the U.S. used to be split by a shallow sea, the Appalachians used to be very tall mountains comparable to the Himalayas, and that Florida used to be submerged.”

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