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Presentation: The PANALESIS Atlas: a Series of Maps and Indicators Depicting the Earth Evolution During the Phanerozoic

Franziskakis, Florian; Werner, Niklas; Vérard, Christian; Kasparian, Jerome; Castelltort, Sébastien; Giuliani, Gregory

Abstract

Presentation given during the American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2025 Annual Meeting in New Orleans (LA, USA), within Session "GP43A - Frontiers in Paleogeography". The movement of plate tectonics controls the long-term evolution of the Earth surface, including how continents and oceans are distributed, shapes the topography and influences how sea-level fluctuates. Palaeogeography is the study of how the geography of the Earth changed through time, and is a key factor to be considered when modelling the climate of the past. For instance, changes in ocean-continent distribution affects oceanic circulation (Zhang et al., 2011), or topography influences the area of land where snow can accumulate (Foster et al., 2010). We present here an Atlas of the Earth through the Phanerozoic, based on the PANALESIS plate tectonic model (Vérard 2019). In this Atlas, we share a set of products showing how the Earth evolved through the 45 time steps provided by the model. These products include maps of the palaeogeography, seafloor ages, crustal and lithospheric thickness, maximum hydrothermal penetration depth. We also provide maps of hydrology, including outlet points used in climate models, flow paths and oceanic passages. Besides maps, we developed a set of indicators that describe the evolving geography, useful for climate modelling and for understanding the role of palaeogeography. These indicators include notably oceanic volume and area, area of land over several latitude ranges, at high altitudes, continental shelves, drainage basins area, water and sediment fluxes.This new Atlas has the advantage of being developed solely on the PANALESIS model, reducing uncertainties of other palaeogeographic studies, that oftentimes use more than one plate tectonic model or other data sources. Moreover, PANALESIS is currently the only model that allows fully quantified palaeogeographic maps, including bathymetry, allowing more precise palaeogeographic reconstructions and their derived indicators.

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Florian Franziskakis1, Niklas Werner2, Christian Vérard3, Jérôme Kasparian1,4, Sébastien Castelltort3, Grégory Giuliani1 1) 2) 3) 4) The PANALESIS Atlas: a Series of Maps and Indicators Depicting the Earth Evolution During the Phanerozoic Deep-time Earth: PANALESIS Model Palaeogeography 1 Palaeogeography 2 Palaeogeography 3 Palaeogeography 4 Palaeogeography 5 Modified after Vérard et al. (2015) TopoChronia QGIS Plugin https://github.com/florianfranz/topo_chronia https://topo-chronia.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ https://github.com/florianfranz/topo_chronia/releases/tag/v1.0.0-beta https://github.com/openjournals/joss-reviews/issues/8108 (in review) Analyzing Palaeogeography Land area by hemisphere Oceanic area High altitude land area Continental shelves area https://github.com/florianfranz/geo_indicators Beyond Palaeogeography Is PANALESIS suitable as a standalone model to create products of the Earth in deep-time, beyond palaeogeography only ? Do these products accurately describe various Earth system layers ? Is self-consistency a risk or an opportunity ? Plate Model (PM) Plate Polygons (PP) Cont-Ocean Boundary (COB) PANALESIS Atlas Products Franziskakis et al. (in prep) Plate Model (PM) Plate Polygons (PP) Cont-Ocean Boundary (COB) Palaeogeography PANALESIS Atlas Products Franziskakis et al. (in prep) Plate Model (PM) Plate Polygons (PP) Cont-Ocean Boundary (COB) Palaeogeography Seafloor Ages PANALESIS Atlas Products Franziskakis et al. (in prep) Plate Model (PM) Plate Polygons (PP) Cont-Ocean Boundary (COB) Palaeogeography Crustal Thickness Seafloor Ages PANALESIS Atlas Products Franziskakis et al. (in prep) Products validation: seafloor ages Franziskakis et al. (in prep) Oceans: Muller et al. = 63.4 Myr PANALESIS = 62.1 Myr Δ = -1.4 Myr Std-dev (diff) = 11.9 Myr Products validation: lithospheric thickness Franziskakis et al. (in prep) Continents: Afonso et al. = 119.8km PANALESIS = 121.2km Δ = 1.5km Std-dev (diff) = 45.9km ---------------------------------- Oceans: Afonso et al. = 98.0km PANALESIS = 97.8km Δ = -0.2km Std-dev (diff) = 22.5km ---------------------------------- Global: Afonso et al. = 106.8km PANALESIS = 107.2km Δ = 0.4km Std-dev (diff) = 33.9km Present-day (000 Myr) Ordovician (444 Ma) Triassic (250 Ma) Cretaceous (120 Ma) Time series analysis Crustal Thickness Seafloor Age Lithospheric Thickness Palaeogeography Applications: Earth Surface Dynamics Palaeogeography Flow Direction (D8) Flow Accumulation Flow Paths Outlets Moinat et al. (in review): https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-2946/ Sediment flux Key Takeaways Reconstructing the Earth in deep-time beyond palaeogeography Atlas products: seafloor ages, crustal & lithospheric thickness, hydrology, hydrothermal penetration depth, climate Products validated against reference data (present-day) Applications in Earth surface dynamics, palaeoclimatology, geodynamics All products available trough the Palaeo Data Cube Presentation: Tomorrow 10:40–10h48 (Room 293) References Afonso, J. C., Salajegheh, F., Szwillus, W., Ebbing, J., & Gaina, C. (2019). A global reference model of the lithosphere and upper mantle from joint inversion and analysis of multiple data sets. Geophysical Journal International , 217 (3), 1602–1628. https://doi.org/10.1093/gji/ggz094 Bassin, C. (2000). The Current Limits of resolution for surface wave tomography in North America. Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union . https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Current-Limits-of-resolution-for-surface-wave-Bassin/2c9f4ca7fcec2024ce4b22b087517fa8a4cb1385 Ho, T., Priestley, K., & Debayle, E. (2016). A global horizontal shear velocity model of the upper mantle from multimode Love wave measurements. Geophysical Journal International , 207 (1), 542–561. https://doi.org/10.1093/gji/ggw292 Moinat, L., Franziskakis, F., Vérard, C., Goldberg, D. N., and Brunetti, M.: biogeodyn-MITgcmIS (v1): a biogeodynamical tool for exploratory climate modelling, EGUsphere [preprint], https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2946, 2025. Müller, R. D., Sdrolias, M., Gaina, C., & Roest, W. R. (2008). Age, spreading rates, and spreading asymmetry of the world’s ocean crust. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems , 9 (4). https://doi.org/10.1029/2007GC001743 NOAA. (2022). NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. 2022: ETOPO 2022 15 Arc-Second Global Relief Model. [Dataset]. https://doi.org/10.25921/fd45-gt74 Pasyanos, M. E., Masters, T. G., Laske, G., & Ma, Z. (2014). LITHO1.0: An updated crust and lithospheric model of the Earth. Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth , 119 (3), 2153–2173. https://doi.org/10.1002/2013JB010626 Vérard, C., Hochard, C., Baumgartner, P. O., Stampfli, G. M., & Liu, M. (2015). Geodynamic evolution of the Earth over the Phanerozoic: Plate tectonic activity and palaeoclimatic indicators. Journal of Palaeogeography , 4 (2), 167–188. https://doi.org/10.3724/SP.J.1261.2015.00072