Explore the Science of Earth's Deep History with EarthViewer

What did Earth look like 250 million years ago? Or 1 billion years ago? Or 4.5 billion years ago? What was the climate like in the deep past?

Find the answers with EarthViewer, an interactive tool for exploring the science of Earth’s deep history. From molten mass to snowball earth, EarthViewer lets you see continents grow and shift as you scroll through billions of years. Additional layers let you and your students explore changes in sea level, atmospheric composition, temperature, biodiversity, day length, and solar luminosity over deep time.

Pelican Mapping developed EarthViewer for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). EarthViewer is a web port of an existing iOS/Android application developed by HHMI. We completely rewrote the mobile application in HTML, CSS, and Javascript using Cesium for the globe rendering and managed to maintain the original look and feel of the original app even though all of the code is completely new. We considered multiple approaches for the globe rendering, but using Cesium was definitely the most straightforward way to go on the web.

EarthViewer is available on the Google Chrome store and online.