Plates Kenny Lienhard
Plates

Plate 10 of 52

India

Kenny Lienhard, Plates, 2026

Palette
Citrine, from cropland
Structure
Monocline
Drift
5.7 cm a year, northeast
12,435,054 km², a minor plate

How it is made

Finished

The Plate in detail

India, seed 114

Plate 10 of 52 · one of one

Traits

Palette
Citrine
Structure
Monocline
Event
Unconformity
Faults
None
Scale
Standard
Hang
Level
Accent
Single
Heading
Northeast, 43.5°
Speed
5.68 cm a year

History

3.5 billion years ago
The ancient core of India began to form.
136 million years ago
A new ocean ridge began to split India away from Australia and Antarctica.
87.6 million years ago
India broke away from Madagascar as hot mantle rose beneath them.
66.2 million years ago
Vast lava floods, the Deccan Traps, erupted around the time of the mass extinction that ended the age of dinosaurs.
59 million years ago
India began to collide with Asia, starting the rise of the Himalaya.

Sources: Mishra et al. 1999, Precambrian Research 93:139 · Chaudhuri et al. 2018, Scientific Reports 8:7069 · Gibbons, Whittaker and Muller 2013, Journal of Geophysical Research 118:808 · Storey et al. 1995, Science 267:852 · Schoene et al. 2015, Science 347:182 · ICS International Chronostratigraphic Chart v2024/12 (Cohen et al. 2013, updated), stratigraphy.org · Hu et al. 2016, Earth-Science Reviews 160:264

Technical notes

The file

90,010bytes, the whole work
74,112bytes of engine, gzip and base64
0network requests
2048 pxdrawn on up to 8 workers, at your screen’s size

One HTML file: the engine (151,144 bytes minified), this plate's data and a small loader. It reads your clock and slides the view to where the plate is today.

engine sha256 a7fbc03acc0fc9ba343881bb88ddaf2b7564564d8bc9cbed16e75e47e01fb3f2

Sources

  • The plate, its outline and its motionBird, P. (2003). An updated digital model of plate boundaries. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems 4(3), 1027.
  • What covers it, which chose the paletteESA CCI Land Cover and Water Bodies, ETOPO 2022, Köppen-Geiger climate maps, NSIDC Sea Ice Index.

The work

Live

One HTML file that drifts with your clock, a few centimetres a year.