Christopher Robert Scotese

Northwestern University | NU · Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences

In 1982, when I was a graduate student, I was asked by Discover magazine to produce a set of maps showing future plate motions (Overbye, 1982). I replied that I thought that I could make a reasonable extrapolation of current plate motions 50 million years into the future. However, that was not sufficient. The magazine wanted maps for 50 million, 15...

Abstract This report describes the contents of the PALEOMAP PaleoAtlas for GPlates, describes how the maps in the PaleoAtlas were made, documents the sources of information used to make the paleogeographic maps, and provides instructions how to plot user-defined paleodata on the paleogeographic maps using the program “PaleoDataPlotter”. The PALEOMA...

2013.03 This book comes in three formats: digital version, print-on-demand version, and 11x17 printed map folio. This publication combines the interpretations of two major sets of data. One is the geophysical data that is used to interpret the position of the tectonic plates through geologic time. The other is based on a long time search of the g...

2001.06 The Atlas of Earth History is made up of the maps that appear at the PALEOMAP Project website (www.scotese.com). A version of the Atlas with higher resolution maps (file size = 45Mb) is available from the Author.

1990.04 We review the highlights of the 1988 symposium on Palaeozoic Biogeography and Palaeogeography, and present a revised set of 20 Palaeozoic base maps,that incorporate much,of the new data presented at the symposium. The maps include 5 major innovations: (1) A preliminary attempt has been made,to describe the motion of the Cathaysian terranes...

Solid Earth CO2 outgassing, driven by plate tectonic processes, is a key driver of carbon cycle models. However, the magnitudes and variations in outgassing are poorly constrained in deep‐time. We assess plate tectonic carbon emissions and sequestration by coupling a plate tectonic model with reconstructions of oceanic plate carbon reservoirs and a...

Stromatoporoid sponges flourished throughout the Silurian Period, during the Middle Devonian Epoch, and the first half of the Late Devonian Epoch (Frasnian Age). Their prime habitats were in shallow carbonate seas of the tropics and sub-tropics. During the Early Devonian the overall geographic extent of stromatoporoids, and their generic diversity,...

The tectonics, geography, and climate of the Cretaceous world was a very different from the modern world. At the start of the Cretaceous, the supercontinent of Pangea had just begun to break apart and only a few small ocean basins separated Laurasia, West Gondwana, and East Gondwana. Unlike the modern world, there were no significant continent-cont...

This talk is a brief presentation that I gave at a special session of the Deep Time Digital Earth group at EGU in Vienna, 2024. It describes how we build global plate tectonic models, compares the results of several models, and recommends that we work towards a new "global standard plate model".

The jigsaw-puzzle fit of South America and Africa is an icon of plate tectonics and continental drift. Fieldwork in Angola since 2002 allows the correlation of onshore outcrops and offshore geophysical and well-core data in the context of rift, sag, salt, and post-salt drift phases of the opening of the central South Atlantic. These outcrops, rangi...

The geological record encodes the relationship between climate and atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) over long and short timescales, as well as potential drivers of evolutionary transitions. However, reconstructing CO 2 beyond direct measurements requires the use of paleoproxies and herein lies the challenge, as proxies differ in their assumptions...

Global plate models (GPMs) aim to reconstruct the tectonic evolution of the Earth by modelling the motion of the plates and continents through time. These models enable palaeobiologists to study the past distribution of extinct organisms. However, different GPMs exist that vary in their partitioning of the Earth's surface and the modelling of conti...

Mammals have dominated Earth for approximately 55 Myr thanks to their adaptations and resilience to warming and cooling during the Cenozoic. All life will eventually perish in a runaway greenhouse once absorbed solar radiation exceeds the emission of thermal radiation in several billions of years. However, conditions rendering the Earth naturally i...

Paleogeography is the merger of sediment and volcanic facies, depositional settings, tectonic plate movements, topography, climate patterns and ecosystems through time. The construction of paleogeographic maps on tectonic plate reconstruction models requires a team effort to compile databases, data sharing standards and map projection methods. Two...

This PDF contains the extensive Supplementary Data of the paper "Amber and the Cretaceous Resinous Event" at the end of it

THE PAPER IS IN OPEN ACCESS IN THE URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2023.104486 Amber is fossilized resin that preserves biological remains in exceptional detail, study of which has revolutionized understanding of past terrestrial organisms and habitats from the Early Cretaceous to the present day. Cretaceous amber outcrops are more abund...

1. Global Plate Models (GPMs) aim to reconstruct the tectonic evolution of the Earth by modelling the motion of the plates and continents through time. These models enable palaeobiologists to study the past distribution of extinct organisms. However, different GPMs exist that vary in their partitioning of the Earth’s surface and the modelling of co...

Coals and evaporites are commonly used as qualitative indicators of wet and dry environments in deep-time climate studies, respectively. Here, we combine geological records with climate simulations to establish quantitative relationships of coals and evaporites with temperature and precipitation over the Phanerozoic. We show that coal records were...

Plate tectonic and paleogeographic maps are presented for nine time intervals during the Ordovician: early Tremadocian (485 Ma), late Tremadocian (480 Ma), early Floian (475 Ma), earliest Dapingian (470 Ma), early Darriwilian (465 Ma), late Darriwilian (460 Ma), middle Sandbian (455 Ma), middle Katian (450 Ma), and early Hirnantian (445 Ma). The ma...

The Proterozoic Eon covers 40% of Earth's history, from 2500 to 541 Ma (million years ago), and was home to a series of major events in Earth's history. The tectonic configuration of the early stages of the Proterozoic is not known, but from 1500 Ma onwards there are reconstructions available. They are used here in a dedicated tidal model to simula...

The Phanerozoic Eon spans the past 541 Myr (million years) and includes present day. It was home to the assembly and breakup of the latest supercontinent, Pangea, and the subsequent scattering of the continents into Earth as we know it today. The changing face of the Earth is shown here, using a dedicated numerical tidal model and recent paleo-bath...

Due to increasing availability of data for many fossil groups and a generally accepted palaeogeographical configuration, palaeontologists have been able to develop progressively more robust palaeobiogeographical scenarios for the spatial distributions of Ordovician marine faunas. However, most research in Early Palaeozoic palaeobiogeography centers...

The Chicxulub crater is the site of an asteroid impact linked with the Cretaceous‐Paleogene (K‐Pg) mass extinction at ∼66 Ma. This asteroid struck in shallow water and caused a large tsunami. Here we present the first global simulation of the Chicxulub impact tsunami from initial contact of the projectile to global propagation. We use a hydrocode t...

A thorough exploration of the fascinating evolution of tides through the Earth’s history and their impacts on the Earth Did you know that the size of the full moon in the night sky is determined by how the continents have been arranged on Earth throughout its history? This is indeed the case, because the tides are largely controlled by the size of...

What controls species diversity and diversification is one of the major questions in evolutionary biology and paleontology. Previous studies have addressed this issue based on various plant and animal groups, geographic regions, and time intervals. However, as most previous research focused on terrestrial or marine ecosystems, our understanding of...

This poster summarises our ongoing research on the impact of using different Plate Rotation Models (PRMs, also know as "Global Plate Models" or "Palaeorotation models") in a palaeobiological framework. These models have become widespread in palaeobiology as they provide a reconstruction of a fossil occurrence's geographic coordinates at time of dep...

"How to Make a Snowball Earth" by C.R. Scotese, Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences, Northwestern University This geological tutorial describes the transition from a hothouse to the "super" icehouse world of Snowball Earth.

The early evolutionary and much of the extinction history of marine animals is thought to be driven by changes in dissolved oxygen concentrations ([O2]) in the ocean1–3. In turn, [O2] is widely assumed to be dominated by the geological history of atmospheric oxygen (pO2)4,5. Here, by contrast, we show by means of a series of Earth system model expe...

Global mean sea level is a key component within the fields of climate and oceanographic modelling in the Anthropocene. Hence, an improved understanding of eustatic sea level in deep time aids in our understanding of Earth’s paleoclimate and may help predict future climatological and sea level changes. However, long-term eustatic sea level reconstru...

This article describes a suite of global climate model output files that provide continental climatic conditions (monthly temperatures, precipitation, evaporation, precipitation minus evaporation balance, runoff) together with the calculated Köppen–Geiger climate classes and topography, for 28 evenly spaced time slices through the Phanerozoic (Camb...

Unravelling the drivers of species diversification through geological time is of crucial importance for our understanding of long-term evolutionary processes. Numerous studies have proposed different sets of biotic and abiotic controls of speciation and extinction rates, but typically they were inferred for a single, long geological time frame. How...

During the Miocene, major global cooling occurred during two intervals: the middle Miocene (∼14–13 Ma) and the late Miocene (∼7‐6 Ma). The Antarctic Ice Sheet expanded substantially at ∼14–13 Ma, and glaciation in the Northern Hemisphere was initiated at ∼7–6 Ma. Although the causes of these two global cooling events remain unclear, paleoclimate mo...

The early evolutionary and much of the extinction history of marine animals, is thought to be driven by changes in dissolved oxygen concentrations ([O 2 ]) in the ocean1–3. In turn, [O 2] is widely assumed to be dominated by the geological history of atmospheric oxygen ( p O 2 )4,5. Here, in contrast, we show via a series of Earth system model expe...

Amidst long-term fluctuations of the abiotic environment, the degree to which life organizes into distinct biogeographic provinces (provinciality) can reveal the fundamental drivers of global biodiversity. Our understanding of present-day biogeography implies that changes in the distribution of continents across climatic zones have predictable effe...

Benthic oxygen isotope records are commonly used as a proxy for global mean surface temperatures during the Late Cretaceous and Cenozoic, and the resulting estimates have been extensively used in characterizing major trends and transitions in the climate system and for analysing past climate sensitivity. However, some fundamental assumptions govern...

Marine ecosystems with a diverse range of animal groups became established during the early Cambrian (~541 to ~509 Ma). However, Earth’s environmental parameters and palaeogeography in this interval of major macro-evolutionary change remain poorly constrained. Here, we test contrasting hypotheses of continental configuration and climate that have p...

Paleogeography is the study of the changing surface of Earth through time. Driven by plate tectonics, the configuration of the continents and ocean basins has been in constant flux. Plate tectonics pushes the land surface upward or pulls it apart, causing its collapse. All the while, the unrelenting forces of climate and weather slowly reduce mount...

This study provides a comprehensive and quantitative estimate of how global temperatures have changed during the last 540 million years. It combines paleotemperature measurements determined from oxygen isotopes with broader insights obtained from the changing distribution of lithologic indicators of climate, such as coals, evaporites, calcretes, re...

This study provides a comprehensive and quantitative estimate of how global temperatures have changed during the last 540 million years. It combines paleotemperature measurements determined from oxygen isotopes with broader insights obtained from the changing distribution of lithologic indicators of climate, such as coals, evaporites, calcretes, re...

The severe "Snowball Earth" glaciations proposed to have existed during the Cryogenian period (720 to 635 million years ago) coincided with the breakup of one supercontinent and assembly of another. Whereas the presence of extensive continental ice sheets predicts a tidally energetic Snowball ocean due to the reduced ocean depth, the supercontinent...

Sea levels shape the face of the Earth, define processes of sedimentation, and influences the evolution of life via the distribution of habitats. Ancient topographies can be reconstructed using the history and understanding of tectonic processes, lithological evidence, and present-day topographies. Paleogeographic reconstructions must accommodate e...

The configuration of continents and oceans of our tectonically active planet is ever changing. Using new, high-resolution paleogeographic base maps, we created a set of animations that examine key elements of plate tectonics. These time-and space-based paleoglobe reconstructions illustrate continental rifting, continental breakup, ocean ridges and...

Benthic oxygen isotope records are commonly used as a proxy for global mean surface temperatures during the late Cretaceous and Cenozoic, and the resulting estimates have been extensively used in characterising major trends and transitions in the climate system, and for analysing past climate sensitivity. However, some fundamental assumptions gover...

These files contain the output of Cretaceous global climate simulations conducted using the coupled ocean-atmosphere FOAM general circulation model. They are available every 10 Myrs between 150 Ma and 60 Ma, both included. For each time slice, numerous CO2 levels were used. Files are provided in netcdf format, fully compatible with GIS softwares,...

Platform carbonates are among the most voluminous of Cretaceous deposits. The production of carbonate platforms fluctuated through time. Yet, the reasons for these fluctuations are not well understood, and the underlying mechanisms remain largely unconstrained. Here we document the long-term trend in Cretaceous carbonate platform preservation based...

(Please contact me via email - cscotese AT gmail - if you'd like a copy of the excell speadsheet.) Burning fossil fuels releases CO 2 , a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. As a result, the planet is warming faster than it would warm naturally. How warm will it get? What will the world be like after the warming? These are important questions tha...

The Late Cretaceous paleobiogeography of the coccolithophore Braarudosphaera bigelowii is reconstructed based on 331 stratigraphic occurrences and complemented by 307 neighboring absences. During the Cenomanian B. bigelowii was found throughout the European seaways, at the base of the North America Interior Seaway, at the paleo-Atlantic margin of...

Aim The summits of mountain ranges at mid‐latitude in the Northern Hemisphere share many ecological properties with the Arctic, including comparable climates and similar flora. We hypothesize that the orogeny during the Oligocene‐Miocene combined with global cooling led to the origin and early diversification of cold‐adapted plant lineages in these...

The Cryogenian (720-635 million years (Ma) ago) was a period in Earth's history of prolonged and severe glaciations, known as "Snowball Earth". The two main glaciations were probably near-global in extent, and the first of these (the Sturtian glaciation) lasted over 55 Ma, from about 715-660 Ma. The second, the Marinoan, "only" lasted 15 Ma, betwee...

Over geological timescales, CO2 levels are determined by the operation of the long term carbon cycle, and it is generally thought that changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration have controlled variations in Earth's surface temperature over the Phanerozoic Eon. Here we compile independent estimates for global average surface temperature and atmospher...

Platform carbonates are a major component of the Earth System but their spatial extent through geological time is difficult to reconstruct, due to the incompleteness of the geological record, sampling heterogeneity and their intrinsic complexity. Here we use coupled ecological niche modeling and deep-time general circulation models to predict the o...

The following table is my estimate of the volume of Phanerozoic Ice based on the area of mapped tillites and dropstone deposits (Boucot et al., 2013). The values are preliminary and subject to change. As expected, the 5 largest ice volume events were the : Hirnantian (6%), Modern (6%), Pliocene (6%), Permo-Carboniferous (5%), and the late Miocene...

After the initial collision between the Amazonia and Laurentia (~1160 Ma), there was a brief period of tectonic readjustment (1120Ma-1100 Ma) when the two plates pivoted about a rotation pole near Detroit (41N,-­-83E, 3.8˚). This slight adjustment was sufficient to produce rifting along the east and west trends of the Midcontinent Rift while at the...

This poster was presented at the 2018 EGU conference. For more detail, please find the paper through the link: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323702555_Palaeolatitudinal_distribution_of_lithologic_indicators_of_climate_in_a_palaeogeographic_framework

This presentation was made at the Earth's Temperature History Research Workshop, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, March 30 & 31, Washington, D.C. It describes how the Earth's temperature has changed during the last 540 million years and reviews how this estimate of past climates was made.

Whether the latitudinal distribution of climate-sensitive lithologies is stable through greenhouse and icehouse regimes remains unclear. Previous studies suggest that the palaeolatitudinal distribution of palaeoclimate indicators, including coals, evaporites, reefs and carbonates, has remained broadly similar since the Permian period, leading to th...

We present revised plate tectonic and paleogeographic reconstructions of the western Tethyan region for the time interval between the late Permian (~ 260 Ma) and the early Jurassic (200 Ma), which encompasses the time of the breakup of Pangaea. Three global paleogeographic reconstructions are presented for the latest Permian (Lopingian, ~ 260 Ma),...

The maps in this atlas are the first draft of a new set of plate tectonic reconstructions that will provide the framework for the revised paleogeographic and paleoclimatic maps that I am preparing for my book, “Earth History: Evolution of the Earth Systems”. As the title of this work implies, the goal of this atlas is to identify the major continen...

Whether the latitudinal distribution of climate-sensitive lithologies are stable through greenhouse and icehouse regimes remains unclear. Previous studies suggest that the paleolatitudinal distribution of paleoclimate indicators, including coals, evaporites, reefs and carbonates, have remained broadly similar since Permian times, leading to the con...

The Cryogenian period (~720-635 Ma) is marked by extensive Snowball Earth glaciations. These have previously been linked to CO2 draw-down, but the severe cold climates of the Cryogenian have never been replicated during the Phanerozoic despite similar, and sometimes more dramatic changes to carbon sinks. Here we quantify the total CO2 input rate, b...