Story perspectives

Utrecht Launches Tool Revealing Netherlands Tropical Desert 245 Myr Ago

5/1/2026

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Summary

Story summary

Utrecht University researchers launched Paleolatitude.org to track latitude changes over 320 million years.
The tool reads magnetic minerals in rocks and now adds magnetic-anomaly and small-plate movement data.
It showed that 245 million years ago the area of Netherlands was at a tropical latitude, a desert climate.
Scientists can now link fossil rocks to plates for climate and biodiversity studies and aim to extend the model to the Cambrian 550 million years ago.

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Story summary

Utrecht University researchers launched Paleolatitude.org to track latitude changes over 320 million years.
The tool reads magnetic minerals in rocks and now adds magnetic-anomaly and small-plate movement data.
It showed that 245 million years ago the area of Netherlands was at a tropical latitude, a desert climate.
Scientists can now link fossil rocks to plates for climate and biodiversity studies and aim to extend the model to the Cambrian 550 million years ago.