Layers hold tales of time

Move your cursor to dig — touch and drag on mobile

Every band of sediment records a chapter of the planet, from drowned seabeds to drifting ash, pressed flat across millions of years.

Our interactive maps let you peel back the crust and trace how stone, fossil and deep time shaped the ground you are standing on.

Four billion years, one vertical metre at a time.

Strata turns core samples into something you can actually read. Pick a site, drag down through the column and watch the climate, the sea level and the life of that moment redraw themselves around you.

0 – 12k years

Holocene

Topsoil, ash and everything humans have left behind.
12k – 2.6m

Pleistocene

Ice advancing and retreating, grinding the landscape flat.
2.6m – 66m

Cenozoic

Warm shallow seas, chalk, and the first grasslands.
66m – 4.5bn

Deep time

Basalt, granite and the oldest rock we can still touch.

Field guides for eleven regions.

Each guide is written by someone who has walked the ground: what to look for, where the good exposures are, and which roadside cutting is worth stopping the car for.

Atlantic coastSandstone, shale and a lot of wind. 46 sites mapped.
Northern lakesGlacial scouring at its most obvious. 31 sites mapped.
Dry interiorSalt, gypsum and old seabeds. 28 sites mapped.
Volcanic beltBasalt columns and ash layers you can date by eye. 22 sites.

How the digging works.

Point at any mapped location and Strata assembles a column from public survey data, our own core samples and the notes of everyone who has walked it before you.

01

Pick a spot

Tap the map, or type a postcode. Coverage is deepest in the eleven mapped regions.

02

Peel the crust

Drag downward and the column opens layer by layer, with depth and age in the margin.

03

Read the moment

Every band carries the climate, sea level and life of its time, written in plain language.

04

Take it outside

Guides download for offline use, because signal disappears exactly where the rock gets good.

Plans

Free for anyone curious. Paid for people who take it into the field.

CuriousFree
  • Three regions
  • Full time column
  • Web only
Most chosenField€6/mo
  • All eleven regions
  • Offline guides
  • Core sample archive
  • Print-ready columns
Institution€240/yr
  • Everything in Field
  • Up to 40 seats
  • Raw survey data export
  • Named support contact
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