Earth Today
The world as it is right now — the last frame of the continental-drift series, and just another passing moment in deep time.
Drag to spin — this is what yours looks like folded.
About this globe
Today's Earth, rendered from the same PALEOMAP elevation grids and in the same style as the deep-time series, so the familiar continents take their place as simply the latest arrangement — frame six of a film that never stops running.
The drift continues: the Atlantic widens by a few centimeters a year, East Africa is slowly tearing away along its rift valley, and in another 100 million years this globe will look as strange as the others.
How the data was captured
Reconstructed by paleogeographer Christopher Scotese by rewinding plate motions recorded in seafloor magnetism and matching rock formations, then estimating ancient elevations from geology; the present-day grid anchors the same series, rendered by us from the published elevation data.
Data: PALEOMAP PaleoDEMs — Scotese and Wright 2018 (CC BY 4.0) →
Download free — pick your paper size
Print at 100% scale. Cut along solid lines, fold along dashed lines, glue the tabs. Your PDF can take up to a minute to prepare — hang tight after clicking.
In the US? Print the A4 file and choose “fit to page” — it scales cleanly onto Letter paper.
Sharing this globe?
Free for personal use, classrooms, and gifts — not for resale. If you post it on your site or share it online, please credit Folding Globes with a link. Copy-paste blurb:
"Earth Today" folding paper globe — free from Folding Globes, https://foldingglobes.com/globes/earth-today · Data: PALEOMAP PaleoDEMs — Scotese and Wright 2018 (CC BY 4.0)
Make it yours
Every paid shape also lets you pin your own places on the map.