Presentation: The Palæo Data Cube: Advancing Deep-time Earth Data Management & Sharing

Presentation given during the Love Data Week at the University of Geneva. Understanding Earth’s evolution across geological timescales requires access to spatially explicit deep‑time datasets, yet existing palaeogeographic and geodynamic products are often disseminated as isolated files with limited metadata, heterogeneous formats, and no standard mechanisms for time-series analysis. This hinders reproducibility, interoperability, and large‑scale comparative studies. We present the Palaeo Data Cube (PDC), the first open framework that applies concepts and technologies from modern Earth Observation data to deep‑time Earth system data. The PDC integrates palaeogeographic reconstructions and six derived global products over 45 time steps covering the last 545 million years, all sharing a consistent projection, resolution, and temporal structure. The system relies entirely on open standards, combining GeoServer for spatiotemporal data access, GeoNetwork for ISO‑19115 compliant metadata, and a SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog (STAC) for discovery. This architecture provides a harmonized, FAIR‑compliant environment where users can query, visualize, and analyse deep‑time datasets using the same tools commonly used for present‑day digital Earth platforms. The PDC enables new applications in palaeoclimatology, geodynamics, and landscape evolution, while also supporting geoscience education. By establishing a scalable and extensible foundation, the PDC represents a major step toward a fully interoperable “Digital Earth of the past.”