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v1.1 · Published 2026-05-16
Data sources and descriptions updated: 2026-09-27

The Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and Content License Policy on this page are currently in effect and apply to every Member who signs in to contribute. Browsing the Service requires no sign-in; a Google account is required only when contributing (adding materials, feedback, etc.).

Disclaimer

Play 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.

  • Terrain at 0–540 Ma is interpolated between source ages. At 540–1800 Ma, Cao et al. (2024) reconstructs continental crust, not ancient coastlines, elevation or climate. Configurations can differ at the 540 Ma model transition; smoother interpolation does not improve scientific accuracy.
  • The 540–1800 Ma view uses a fixed +60° eastward display rotation without changing source data. Both 2D and 3D preserve the model’s latitudes and poles; display longitudes differ from the model’s. This view alignment does not remove differences in continental configurations or shapes.
  • City locations are estimates of ancient positions within the PALEOMAP model’s supported ages. They do not imply that cities existed then, and model uncertainty applies.
  • Fossils are a selected subset of PBDB records, with sampling biases by age, region and taxon. Record counts are not abundance or biodiversity.
  • Climate uses adapted and interpolated annual model means from CESM (Li et al. 2022), not direct observations. 0 Ma is pre-industrial; simplified Köppen is an approximate classification.
  • CO₂ uses CenCO₂PIP proxy summaries; sea level uses Miller (2020); O₂ uses literature ranges/peaks. CO₂ ranges describe samples, not confidence intervals. Unsupported ages have no estimate.
  • Wind visualization approximates the annual mean of CESM 1000 hPa winds.
  • Currents are a wind/sea-temperature illustration, not a physical ocean simulation. Particle speed is not a physical velocity.
  • Plate boundaries use SETON2012 (0–200 Ma) and Müller 2022 (200–540 Ma) as separate model comparisons. Their reference frames differ from PALEOMAP terrain and coordinates.
  • PaleoCoastlines-based ancient coastlines are representative maximum-flooding reconstructions, not exact coastlines at the selected instant or evidence of a basin’s isolation or reconnection date.
  • Ice-age views use PaleoMIST reconstructions for the past 80,000 years and show the nearest source step; 0 ka refers to 1950 CE. Small islands and narrow straits can be omitted. Ice extent does not establish sea ice, grounding conditions or human passability.
  • Vegetation colors and depictions of volcanism, impacts and human movement are illustrative. They are not observations of actual vegetation cover, lava or damage extents, or exact migration routes.
  • City geology summarizes present-day maps, not site surveys. Museum specimen photos are not asserted to match the PBDB records shown on the map.
  • 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 Play Deep Time Earth (the "Service").

2. Definitions

  • "Service": the web application that lets users explore Earth from 1800 Ma to today, with data coverage varying by age 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

Browsing the Service requires no account. To make contributions (adding materials, feedback, etc.), you must register and sign in via Google account social login. At sign-in, the email, name, and account identifier provided by Google are collected as Member information, and 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 (contributing Members): the email address, name, and OAuth provider account identifier supplied by Google at sign-in. display_name defaults to the Google-provided name (or the email local-part if absent).
  • 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.
  • Likes on organisms, explorations and events are linked to a signed browser identifier. Collections saved after sign-in link the Member's ID to the organism, region and age of the discovery.
  • To limit repeated requests, the connection IP is transformed into a hash that changes daily; this feature does not store the raw IP in its database. Only when opted in, activity minutes are recorded for visible content that you have recently interacted with.

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
  • Cloudflare Turnstile — an automation check when repeated requests are detected and you choose to continue verification
  • Google — OAuth social-login identity provider (supplies account info such as email and name at sign-in)
  • 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, Play Deep Time Earth processes personal data as the Data Controller. The contact for data-protection inquiries is contact@playdeeptime.earth.

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 (contact@playdeeptime.earth)

Content License Policy

1. Scope

This policy applies to Contributions submitted by Members to Play 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.

Community activity retention

Hourly maintenance converts activity records older than 7 days into daily aggregates without browser identifiers and retains the most recent 90 days of aggregates. Daily network hashes used to limit repeated requests are deleted at the next maintenance run after 48 hours without use. Removing a like deletes its record. Signed-in collections are deleted when the account is deleted.

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.
  • Likes and map-discovery cookie (pdte-community-actor) — a signed browser identifier for deduplication and discovery verification, lasting up to one year. It does not identify the same person across different browsers or devices.
  • Sign-in restoration in sessionStorage — the open information panel and scene for up to 24 hours, and map-discovery proof for up to 5 minutes. Used when returning to the same tab after sign-in; proof is never placed in the URL.
  • 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:

  • Cao et al. (2024), 1.8-billion-year tectonic model v2.4 — dataset CC BY 4.0, distinct from the paper’s CC BY-NC-ND license.
  • PaleoDEM (Scotese & Wright 2018, Zenodo 5460860) — CC BY 4.0
  • PaleoMAP PaleoCoastlines data (Kocsis & Scotese 2023, v7.3, Zenodo 7994000) and derived water visualizations — CC BY 4.0. Adaptation, interpolation and coverage are described in the credits.
  • PaleoMIST 1.0 (Gowan 2019, PANGAEA 905800; related study Gowan et al. 2021) and derived land / ice-sheet visualizations — CC BY 4.0. Sources, changes and model limits are listed on Credits & Data Sources. Attribution and change notices apply; author endorsement or warranty is not implied.
  • Human-origin events — independent factual summaries with item-level primary-study citations. Paper text, figures and genetic sequences are not redistributed; each publication and its associated data retain their own rights. See research sources.
  • PALEOMAP PaleoAtlas / rotation model (Scotese 2016, v3, Zenodo 10596610) — CC BY 4.0
  • SETON2012 rotation model (Seton et al. 2012) — CC BY 4.0
  • Müller 2022 rotation model (plate boundaries, v1.2.4, Zenodo 13636799) — CC BY 4.0
  • CESM paleoclimate simulation (Li et al. 2022) — CC BY 4.0
  • PBDB — CC0 1.0
  • ICS geological timescale 2026/06, CenCO₂PIP v1.02, Miller (2020) sea level and Macrostrat city geology — CC BY 4.0
  • Smithsonian NMNH fossil specimen photos — CC0 1.0; individual specimen sources appear in the gallery.
  • O₂, biota and event descriptions — original summaries of scientific literature; underlying works retain their own rights.
  • Aurora — Scott Buckley — CC BY 4.0. Source and edit notices appear in the music credits. Impact sounds are original productions.
  • Geist and modified Noto Sans CJK fonts (Deep Time Share) — OFL 1.1
  • PyGPlates software — GPL v2
  • Natural Earth (coastline correction) — Public Domain
  • PhyloPic (taxon silhouettes in creature cards and on request in fossil details) — per-image (CC0 / CC BY); original attribution and license shown with each image

The Service complies with attribution and change-notice obligations of the CC BY licenses. PNGs and videos showing this ancient reconstruction also retain source, license and display-rotation notices.

Service Copyright

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

External data is provided according to each source's rights status, including its applicable license, CC0 dedication, or public-domain status.

Contact

For questions about data use, licensing, rights-infringement reports, or anything else, please contact contact@playdeeptime.earth.

Effective: the Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and Content License Policy on this page were published on 2026-05-16 (v1.1), are currently in effect, and apply to every Member who signs in to contribute.