From magma to humankind
4.6 billion years of Earth history in 13 eras: from a molten young planet through Snowball Earth and Pangaea to today's continents. Choose an era in the timeline or on a card and the globe shows the Earth of that moment.
Explore these eras on the interactive Master Map →Loading map textures; the previous reconstruction stays visible...
Modern Earth · Drag to rotateRotate with two fingers
Map anchors: Laat-Eoceen and Heden / Blue Marble. The transition is an image blend, not a computed plate motion.Selected era · Map shown: Present
Period · 2.58 Ma – present
Ice ages and the emergence of modern humans.
Organisms from this era in the database; the globe shows their find sites where they lay at the time.
Homo erectus
Homo neanderthalensis
Smilodon
Woolly mammoth
Megatherium
Diprotodon
Moa (Dinornis)
Homo floresiensis
Giant deer (Irish elk)
Iconic fossilHomo erectus · KNM-WT 15000
Found in 1984 by Kamoya Kimeu
Nariokotome, Lake Turkana
Museum: National Museums of Kenya, Nairobi
The most complete Homo erectus skeleton ever found: a boy aged between 7 and 11 who lived 1.5 to 1.6 million years ago. His long legs and build show how far adaptation to walking on two legs had already progressed.
Image: Eduard Pop et al. · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Each card is an era in the colour of the International Chronostratigraphic Chart (ICS). Load a card on the globe or click a moment to jump straight to it.
536 million years
Formation of the Earth; a magma ocean, the impact that formed the Moon, and the first solid crust.
1,531 million years
The first continental cores (cratons) and the first life.
1,780 million years
Increasing oxygen levels, more complex life, and the formation and breakup of supercontinents.
85 million years
‘Snowball Earth’: ice sheets reached the equator following the breakup of Rodinia.
96.2 million years
Complex multicellular organisms appeared after the major glaciations.
239.9 million years
Animal life diversified; plants and animals colonized the land.
47 million years
Pangaea was fully assembled; the period ended with the largest mass extinction in Earth's history.
50.5 million years
Pangaea began to break apart, and the first dinosaurs appeared.
56.4 million years
Laurasia and Gondwana became increasingly separated.
79 million years
The Atlantic Ocean widened; the period ended with a mass extinction.
43 million years
Mammals diversified, and the continents moved closer to their present positions.
20.5 million years
Grasslands expanded and early hominins appeared.
2.6 million years
Ice ages and the emergence of modern humans.