What did Earth’s continents and oceans look like 250 million years ago, or even 1 billion years ago? What do we know about the climate back when our planet formed? How has sea level changed since the melting of the last ice age and what does the future hold?

EarthViewer is like a time machine for exploring Earth’s deep history. Based on the latest scientific research, it lets you scroll through the last 4.5 billion years with your fingertips. Follow a favorite landmark, be it Greenland or New York City, as its position shifts through time, or watch a famous fossil like Tiktaalik make an incredible journey from its origin to its current location. Layer your view of shifting continents with data on atmospheric composition, temperature, biodiversity, day length, and solar luminosity, to get a more complete view of our dynamic planet.

EarthViewer features include:

• Continental reconstructions and accompanying data dating back billions of years
• Sea level maps for the last 21,000 year and for 8,000 years into the future
• Global temperature maps for the last 100+ years
• Ability to manipulate the globe and zoom to any location
• Locations of modern cities tracked back over 500 million years
• In-depth features on major geological and biological events in Earth history
• Clickable details on geologic eons, eras, and periods
• Automated play modes
• Animations between globe and flat map projections
• Extensive reference list
• Suggestions for classroom use

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) is a non-profit medical research organization that ranks as one of the nation’s largest philanthropies. HHMI’s BioInteractive initiative opens a window on cutting-edge science through interactive web features, short films, virtual labs, and scientific animations. Since teachers play a pivotal role in launching the careers of future scientists and in helping the public understand the beauty and import of science, the BioInteractive team partners with the teaching community to create and distribute media that is engaging and relevant to the science curriculum.

What’s New

Version 2.1

NEW - Added iPhone Compatibility!

Ratings and Reviews

4.5 out of 5
69 Ratings

69 Ratings

ch'askoid ,

4.5 billion years of fun

I just got sucked into this app for 3 hours, it's pretty rad. It's a little hard to control the timeline, but if you keep your finger on it and drag it slowly it works well enough. Adding extra layers doesn't seem to slow it down, which is nice. It's fun to pick a spot you know fairly well and zoom in, then watch it change over the eon. I haven't yet dug into all the features, but the night is young...

Anonymous432105 ,

Absolutely Fantastic!

A free app that shows the history of our Earth from 4.6 billion years ago to today. It really should be worth a fortune! There are charts and other fun features that shows where cities and countries were hundreds of millions of years ago! By far an invaluable app!

Done law ,

GREAT but needs a few fixes

I think this app is a great way of viewing our home planet millions of years ago but you need to fix a few things about the graphics.

1) First of all, in the Hadean Epoch, the Earth’s atmosphere was NOT blue, because the atmosphere was void of oxygen.

2) Second of all, if you compare Antarctica in Paleo Earth and Ice Age Earth, Antarctica in 0 mya in Paleo to Ice Age, the Antarctic doesn’t look the same until about 3500 A.D. and that’s weird.

App Privacy

The developer, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, has not provided details about its privacy practices and handling of data to Apple. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy.

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