Where was the ground?

Eight published plate models, asked the same question.

At this age

Place

Coastlines loading. The dots are already right.

How far apart the models are, at every age

The models, at this age

Coastlines drawn by

Three of the eight models publish reconstructed coastlines. This choice changes the land on the map, not the answers above it.

The coastlines are reconstructed by the model named above, not modern outlines moved around: nothing on this map is today's world at any age but zero. Switch the model and the continents move, which is the same disagreement the dots show, drawn as land.

Palaeomagnetism determines how far from the equator a rock formed. It cannot determine its longitude at all. Most of the east-west spread you are looking at is each model's own assumption, not a measurement. It is also why the chart above plots latitude and nothing else.

Equal Earth is equal-area, so a polar continent is squeezed into a thin band along the pole line. Antarctica today is 2.7 per cent of the Earth's surface and takes 2.7 per cent of this map.

Reconstructions fetched 2026-09-05. Every model is named explicitly; none of this is the service's default, which is documented as liable to change.