life-sciences

Paleontology & Deep Time

Fossil dating, mass extinctions, dinosaur scaling laws, plate tectonics, and phylogenetic reconstruction — journey through billions of years of life on Earth.

paleontologyfossilsdinosaursextinctionplate tectonicsevolution

Paleontology reconstructs the history of life from clues locked inside rocks — fossils, isotope ratios, and genetic sequences that reveal a story spanning 3.8 billion years. Five mass extinctions have reshaped the biosphere, continents have drifted across the globe, and organisms have scaled from microscopic cells to 30-metre sauropods, all governed by quantifiable physical and biological laws.

These simulations let you date fossils with radiometric decay curves, replay the timeline of mass extinctions, explore allometric scaling laws that governed dinosaur body size, watch continents reassemble into Pangaea, and build phylogenetic trees from trait matrices. Each tool turns deep time from an abstraction into a hands-on experiment.

5 interactive simulations

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Dinosaur Body Size Scaling Laws Simulator

Explore allometric scaling laws that governed dinosaur body size — from metabolic rate to bone strength and the physics of gigantism

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Radiometric Fossil Dating Methods Simulator

Explore how radioactive decay curves are used to determine the age of fossils and rocks — from carbon-14 to uranium-lead dating

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Mass Extinction Events Timeline Simulator

Explore the Big Five mass extinctions across 500 million years — visualize species loss, recovery time, and the causes behind each catastrophe

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Phylogenetic Tree Reconstruction Simulator

Build phylogenetic trees from trait matrices using distance-based and parsimony methods — explore how evolutionary relationships are inferred

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Continental Drift & Plate Tectonics Simulator

Watch continents drift across the globe over 300 million years — from Pangaea to today's configuration and into the future