Continents on the Move
Push play and watch 300 million years go by.
Australia has not always been where it is now. Long, long ago, all of Earth’s continents were squashed together into one giant landmass. Very slowly — about as fast as your fingernails grow — the continents have been drifting apart ever since, and they’re still moving today.
Drag the slider below to travel back in time, using real data from Earth scientists’ reconstructions of the ancient Earth: real paleo-elevation (how high the mountains and how deep the ocean floor really were), and the real plate boundaries themselves for the more recent part of the timeline.
Green arrows show real plate velocity: direction = which way it’s moving, length = how fast. Every map uses the same scale, so you can compare arrows across the whole timeline.
Reading the map
Colour = height. Green and tan mean low, gently-sloping land; brown means higher hills; white means the very tallest mountains. Blue means ocean — the darker the blue, the deeper the sea floor. Watch for mountain ranges appearing and disappearing as continents crash together and pull apart.
The lines are real plate boundaries — Earth’s plates don’t just drift around freely, they’re separated by these edges. Boundary lines only appear for ages of 100 million years or more recent: real scientists’ maps of exactly which plate is doing what, in that much detail, don’t reach as far back as the mountains-and-oceans picture itself does. Older frames still show real, correctly-lined-up coastlines and mountains — just without the coloured lines on top.
What’s actually happening?
Earth’s outer shell is broken into giant pieces called plates, a bit like the cracked shell of a hard-boiled egg — the lines on the map are the cracks. These plates float on hot, slowly moving rock deep inside the Earth (the mantle), and that slow movement carries the continents along with them — only a few centimetres a year, about the speed your fingernails grow.
Over hundreds of millions of years, a few centimetres a year adds up to thousands of kilometres — enough to turn one giant supercontinent into the seven continents we have today. When two continents crash together, that’s exactly when a brand-new mountain range appears on the map — usually right where a subduction-zone line used to be.
How fast are the plates moving?
Switch to Plate motion above to see it directly: every plate moves at its own speed and in its own direction — some race along, some barely move at all. The arrows are real plate velocities, calculated the same way scientists calculate them, for the exact moment in time you pick with the slider.
Watch what happens right at a red ridge line (arrows point away from it on both sides — the plates are spreading apart) and right at a dark-blue subduction line (arrows point towards it — one plate is diving under the other).
Try it yourself
- Watch one particular mountain range appear as you drag the slider — can you find the moment it forms, and is there a plate boundary line nearby?
- Can you find Australia in every frame, and track how far it travels?
- Switch to Plate motion: count how many separate plate boundaries you can see at an age of 100 million years or more recent.
- Find the fastest-looking arrow on the whole timeline — which plate is it, and when?