DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.11384745
title: A Phanerozoic gridded dataset for palaeogeographic reconstructions

description: This repository provides access to five pre-computed reconstruction files as well as the static polygons and rotation files used to generate them. This set of palaeogeographic reconstruction files provide palaeocoordinates for three global grids at H3 resolutions 2, 3, and 4, which have an average cell spacing of ~316 km, ~119 km, and ~45 km, respectively. Grids were reconstructed at a temporal resolution of one million years throughout the entire Phanerozoic (540–0 Ma). The reconstruction files are stored as comma-separated-value (CSV) files which can be easily read by almost any spreadsheet program (e.g. Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets) or programming language (e.g. Python, Julia, and R). In addition, R Data Serialization (RDS) files—a common format for saving R objects—are also provided as lighter (and compressed) alternatives to the CSV files. The structure of the reconstruction files follows a wide-form data frame structure to ease indexing. Each file consists of three initial index columns relating to the H3 cell index (i.e. the 'H3 address'), present-day longitude of the cell centroid, and the present-day latitude of the cell centroid. The subsequent columns provide the reconstructed longitudinal and latitudinal coordinate pairs for their respective age of reconstruction in ascending order, indicated by a numerical suffix. Each row contains a unique spatial point on the Earth's continental surface reconstructed through time. NA values within the reconstruction files indicate points which are not defined in deeper time (i.e. either the static polygon does not exist at that time, or it is outside the temporal coverage as defined by the rotation file).

The following five Global Plate Models are provided (abbreviation, temporal coverage, reference) within the GPMs folder:



WR13, 0–550 Ma, (Wright et al., 2013)

MA16, 0–410 Ma, (Matthews et al., 2016)

TC16, 0–540 Ma, (Torsvik and Cocks, 2016)

SC16, 0–1100 Ma, (Scotese, 2016)

ME21, 0–1000 Ma, (Merdith et al., 2021)


In addition, the H3 grids for resolutions 2, 3, and 4 are provided within the grids folder. Finally, we also provide two scripts (python and R) within the code folder which can be used to generate reconstructed coordinates for user data from the reconstruction files.

For access to the code used to generate these files:

https://github.com/LewisAJones/PhanGrids

For more information, please refer to the article describing the data:

Jones, L.A. and Domeier, M.M. 2024. A Phanerozoic gridded dataset for palaeogeographic reconstructions. (2024).

For any additional queries, contact: 

Lewis A. Jones (lewisa.jones@outlook.com) or Mathew M. Domeier (mathewd@uio.no)

If you use these files, please cite: 

Jones, L.A. and Domeier, M.M. 2024. A Phanerozoic gridded dataset for palaeogeographic reconstructions. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.10069221

References 



Matthews, K. J., Maloney, K. T., Zahirovic, S., Williams, S. E., Seton, M., & Müller, R. D. (2016). Global plate boundary evolution and kinematics since the late Paleozoic. Global and Planetary Change, 146, 226–250. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2016.10.002.

Merdith, A. S., Williams, S. E., Collins, A. S., Tetley, M. G., Mulder, J. A., Blades, M. L., Young, A., Armistead, S. E., Cannon, J., Zahirovic, S., & Müller, R. D. (2021). Extending full-plate tectonic models into deep time: Linking the Neoproterozoic and the Phanerozoic. Earth-Science Reviews, 214, 103477. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2020.103477.

Scotese, C. R. (2016). Tutorial: PALEOMAP paleoAtlas for GPlates and the paleoData plotter program: PALEOMAP Project, Technical Report.

Torsvik, T. H., & Cocks, L. R. M. (2017). Earth history and palaeogeography. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316225523.

Wright, N., Zahirovic, S., Müller, R. D., & Seton, M. (2013). Towards community-driven paleogeographic reconstructions: Integrating open-access paleogeographic and paleobiology data with plate tectonics. Biogeosciences, 10, 1529–1541. https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-10-1529-2013.