Postcard from Deep Time
Where was YOUR town, hundreds of millions of years ago?
This is the capstone mission — pick a real Australian place, pick a time, and make your own postcard showing where that spot used to be on planet Earth. Every position on every postcard comes from the very same kind of real plate-motion model you’ve been using in every mission so far — this one just lets you choose exactly where and when.
Greetings from Sydney — today!
How do we actually know where your town used to be?
Every star on every postcard comes from a real plate motion model — the same kind of computer model professional Earth scientists use, built by combining thousands of real measurements (the magnetic sea-floor stripes from Mission 2, matching rocks and fossils, and more) into one set of rules for how each plate has moved, year by year, for hundreds of millions of years. Punch in a place and a time, and the model can calculate exactly where that spot on Earth’s crust must have been sitting. It’s the same kind of model, called GPlates, that this whole suite is built on.
Try it yourself
- Add a short story to your postcard — what do you think the weather or the wildlife was like there back then? (Mission 6 can help you check!)
- Compare two different towns at the very same age — were they closer together or further apart than they are today?
- Pick your own home town, if it’s not already on the list — which of the eleven towns here is it closest to, and do you think its journey through deep time looked similar?