Summary
Movement of the Earth's plates through geological time can be described in therms of a series of rotations on the sphere (Earth). If we can determine what these rotations have been, we can rotate ancient geological features on the Earth's plates back to their former positions to produce paleogeographic maps.
We present an open source computer program that performs such rotations on the sphere. The program is written for Microsoft WIndows and runs inside the widely used Geographic Information System (GIS) called ArcGIS produced by the Environmental Systems Research Insitute (ESRI: www.esri.com). The rotation function is activated via a push button control in the ArcMap program (a component of ArcGIS) and can operate on any geographic or geological phenomena represented by points, lines or polygons.
Our rotation program is distributed free of charge together with this report, but a licensed verson of ESRI's ArcGIS software is required to run it. Anyone installing and using our rotation software does so at his or her own risk. We do not accept responsibility for any loss or corruption of data that might occur through use of the software.
