Bruce Murray Space Image Library
Earth, 660 million years ago
The Visible Paleo-Earth project is combining current imagery of Earth's land and cloud cover with geologists' reconstructions of both the extent and the climate of past continental landmasses. This reconstruction shows the supercontinent that existed even before Pangaea, which geologists have named Rodinia. Rodinia was assembled during the late Precambrian, and geologic evidence suggests that its surface was often covered almost to the tropics with glaciers. The breakup of Rodinia happened at roughly the same time as multicellular life first appears in the geologic record. With no multicellular life, there would have been no green plants, of course, so the land surface is basically rocky.