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v1.0 · Published 2026-05-10

The Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and Content License Policy on this page apply to members from the official launch of the contribution system. During the beta period, the service is provided only to email addresses pre-registered by the operator.

Disclaimer

Deep Time Earth is a visualization service for educational and exploratory purposes. The paleogeographic data, fossil distributions, climate indicators, and other information shown are approximations based on public scientific datasets and are not guaranteed to be academically accurate.

  • Continental drift is linearly interpolated at 5 Ma intervals and may differ from actual plate-tectonic motion.
  • City locations are reconstructed by reverse-rotating modern coordinates using PyGPlates rotation models (PALEOMAP/SETON2012/Müller 2022). They do not imply that the city existed at that time, but visualize where its present-day location would have been. Rotation-model uncertainty also applies.
  • Fossil data represents only a subset of the PBDB (up to 10,000 occurrences per time slice, stratified by class).
  • The climate layer is based on the CESM GCM simulation (Li et al. 2022), interpolated from 10 Ma intervals to 5 Ma and upscaled from 0.9° to 4096 px.
  • Global indicators (CO₂, O₂, sea level) are parametric estimates from literature.
  • Wind visualization approximates the annual mean of CESM 1000 hPa winds.
  • Plate boundaries combine SETON2012 (0–200 Ma) and Müller 2022 (200–540 Ma) models.
  • Member-contributed content is reviewed before publication, but the operator does not guarantee its accuracy or legality.

Terms of Service

1. Purpose

These terms govern the rights, obligations, and responsibilities between the operator and users of Deep Time Earth (the "Service").

2. Definitions

  • "Service": the web application that lets users explore Earth from 540 Ma to today and contribute information.
  • "User": any person who uses the Service under these terms.
  • "Member": a User who has logged in and may make contributions (links, materials, feedback, etc.).
  • "Contribution": any link, material, text, or feedback submitted by a Member.

3. Effect and Modification of Terms

These terms take effect when posted on the Service. The operator may modify the terms; material changes will be announced at least 7 days in advance and Members may be required to re-consent. Members who do not agree to the revised terms may terminate their account.

4. Account Registration

During the current beta period, registration and sign-in are performed via email OTP for addresses pre-registered by the operator. Additional sign-in methods such as Google OAuth may be introduced at official launch. By registering, you are deemed to have consented to these terms, the Privacy Policy, and the Content License Policy. The operator may refuse or revoke registration in cases of identity theft, false information, or a risk of harm to public order.

5. User Obligations

Users must not:
  • Submit content that infringes copyright, trademark, or other rights of third parties.
  • Submit false or intentionally misleading information.
  • Disrupt normal operation of the Service (spam, automated abuse, etc.).
  • Defame, insult, or harass other Users.
  • Submit obscene, violent, or unlawful content.
  • Reuse data from the Service in ways that violate its license.

6. Review and Display of Contributions

Member-submitted content is reviewed by the operator (or its delegates) before publication. The operator may, without prior notice, reject, delete, or hide content that:
  • Violates these terms or applicable law.
  • Is reported as infringing third-party rights.
  • Is unrelated to the Service's purpose.

7. Member Rights

Members may hide or delete their own contributions at any time. Portions already cited or referenced by others may, however, be preserved. Members may terminate their account at any time; personal information will then be handled per the Privacy Policy.

8. Limitation of Liability

The Service is a visualization tool for educational and exploratory use; the operator does not guarantee academic accuracy. The operator is not liable for:
  • Service interruption due to force majeure or system failure.
  • Accuracy, legality, or reliability of Member contributions.
  • Content or availability of external links.
  • Disputes between Users.

9. Service Changes and Termination

The operator may modify the Service's features and policies, or terminate the Service. In the event of termination, at least 30 days' advance notice will be given and reasonable efforts will be made to allow Members to export their data.

10. Governing Law and Dispute Resolution

These terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of Korea. Disputes will be resolved by good-faith negotiation; if unresolved, jurisdiction lies with the court of the operator's address. EU/EEA residents retain any non-waivable rights granted by their local law.

Privacy Policy

1. Information Collected

  • Required: email address, display_name (auto-generated from the email local-part). When Google OAuth is enabled, the OAuth provider ID and the name supplied by the provider may also be collected.
  • Automatically collected: IP address, User-Agent, page usage events (for service improvement analytics).
  • Member contributions are stored and linked to the Member's ID for attribution.

2. Purposes of Processing

  • Authentication and identity verification.
  • Author attribution for contributions (display_name).
  • Abuse prevention and Service operation.
  • Statistical analytics for Service improvement.

3. Processors

The operator entrusts limited processing to the following service providers:
  • Supabase — database and authentication infrastructure
  • Vercel — hosting
  • Vercel Analytics — anonymized traffic and performance metrics
  • PostHog (EU region) — usage analytics
These processors comply with GDPR and applicable data-protection laws and process data only within the scope of the entrusted task.

4. Retention

Personal information is retained until the Member terminates their account. Upon termination, identifying information (email, authentication ID, display_name) is deleted immediately, and contributions are either anonymized or deleted at the Member's request. Where applicable law requires longer retention of specific items, those items are retained separately for the required period.

5. Disclosure to Third Parties

The operator does not disclose personal information to third parties except:
  • With the User's prior consent.
  • When required by applicable law (e.g., law-enforcement requests).

6. User Rights

Users may request access, correction, deletion, or restriction of processing of their personal information. On termination, Users may also request deletion of their contributions. Requests can be made by emailing the contact address below; an in-Service profile page (/me) will be provided in a future release.

7. EU/EEA Residents (GDPR)

For Users in the EU/EEA, Deep Time Earth processes personal data as the Data Controller. The contact for data-protection inquiries is inkyfox@gmail.com.

Lawful basis: consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) for account creation and analytics; legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)) for Service operation, security, and abuse prevention.

Your rights: access (Art. 15), rectification (Art. 16), erasure (Art. 17), restriction (Art. 18), portability (Art. 20), objection (Art. 21), and withdrawal of consent at any time. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your national supervisory authority.

International transfers: the operator selects EU regions for processors where available (e.g., PostHog EU). Where data is processed outside the EEA (e.g., by Vercel or Supabase regions outside the EU), safeguards such as Standard Contractual Clauses or adequacy decisions apply.

8. Data Controller

Operator (inkyfox@gmail.com)

Content License Policy

1. Scope

This policy applies to Contributions submitted by Members to Deep Time Earth (links, materials, text, feedback, etc.).

2. License Granted to the Operator

Members grant the operator a non-exclusive, perpetual, worldwide license to use their Contributions. This license covers operation, promotion, backup, display of the Service, and reproduction, publication, modification, and translation within the scope of the Service's purpose. Where a Contribution has already been cited or referenced by other Users, this license may persist for those citations even after the Member deletes the Contribution.

3. Third-Party Reuse

Contributions published on the Service may be freely viewed within the Service, but third parties must obtain prior consent from the operator before reproducing, distributing, or modifying them for commercial or non-commercial purposes. For reuse requests, please contact the email below. External links and their preview images (OG images) remain subject to the copyright of their target pages. Preview images may be cached and served via the operator's server or a CDN for a limited period to improve display reliability and reduce load on origin servers; cached copies are invalidated immediately upon a valid takedown request from the rights holder.

4. Member Warranties

Members warrant that their Contributions:
  • Are submitted with valid rights or under a lawful license held by the Member.
  • Do not infringe the copyright, trademark, image, or reputation rights of any third party.
Liability for breach of these warranties rests solely with the Member; the operator is held harmless.

5. Removal and Modification

Members may hide (remove from public view) or permanently delete their Contributions at any time. The operator may, without prior notice, act on Contributions that violate this policy, are the subject of valid complaints, or are subject to legal demands.

6. Reports and Disputes

Reports of copyright or rights infringement should be sent to the contact email below. Valid reports will be reviewed and handled promptly.

Cookies

The Service uses the following cookies and browser storage:

  • Authentication session cookies (Supabase) — required to maintain login state.
  • Language preference cookie (dte_lang) — functional cookie that stores the selected UI language.
  • PostHog analytics storage — anonymous identifiers stored in browser localStorage or cookies (can be blocked via browser settings or extensions).
  • Vercel Analytics — anonymized page-view and performance metrics; no separate identifier cookie.

Blocking the authentication cookies will prevent login from working.

External Data Licenses

Detailed sources and licenses for the data used in this Service are listed on the Credits & Data Sources page.

Major licenses:

  • PaleoDEM (Scotese & Wright 2018, Zenodo 5460860) — CC BY 4.0
  • PALEOMAP PaleoAtlas / rotation model (Scotese 2016, Zenodo 10596609) — CC BY 4.0
  • SETON2012 rotation model (Seton et al. 2012) — CC BY 3.0
  • Müller 2022 rotation model (plate boundaries) — CC BY 4.0
  • CESM paleoclimate simulation (Li et al. 2022) — CC BY 4.0
  • PBDB — CC BY 4.0
  • PyGPlates software — GPL v2
  • Natural Earth (coastline correction) — Public Domain
  • PhyloPic (fossil hover silhouettes) — per-image (CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-ND only; NC·SA blocked); per-artist attribution shown in the UI

The Service complies with attribution and change-notice obligations of the CC BY licenses.

Service Copyright

The source code, UI design, and editorially produced content (biota descriptions, phylogenetic tree data, etc.) of Deep Time Earth are owned by the operator.

External data remains the property of its respective authors and is used under the applicable license terms.

Contact

For questions about data use, licensing, rights-infringement reports, or anything else, please contact inkyfox@gmail.com.

Effective: the Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and Content License Policy on this page were published on 2026-05-10 (v1.0) and apply to Members from the official launch of the contribution system.