Download GPlates and Data

Download GPlates

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The current stable release of GPlates is GPlates 1.4, released in April 2014.

GPlates runs on Windows, Linux and MacOS X. We provide ready-to-use binary executables for both Windows and MacOS X, enabling a GPlates user to download, install and use the latest version of GPlates immediately. The binaries also include the GPlates-compatible data described below.

• For Windows, we provide a .msi binary installer. Running this installer program will install GPlates on your system. We also provide a .zip file, containing the GPlates executable and its dependency files, for users who wish to use GPlates without installing it.
• For MacOS X, we provide a 32-bit binary bundle for Leopard (10.5) or above in a single .dmg file. We also provide a 64-bit bundle for Snow Leopard (10.6) or above. To install GPlates, simply:
  1. double-click on a .dmg file to open the disk image in Finder
  2. drag the GPlates binary into your Applications folder.
• For Ubuntu, we provide .deb packages for 64 and 32-bit architectures. To install GPlates, simply download the appropriate package for your system and double-click to install.
  • If you are using a different Linux distribution please use the source code package.
  • The Ubuntu packages currently contain the sample data (in /usr/share/gplates/) along with the application - future releases may use separate packages for this.

We provide source-code packages for Windows (the winsrc zip-files) and Linux and MacOS X (the unixsrc tarballs). The source-code packages contain simple sample data, but the larger data files (described below) will need to be downloaded separately. To compile GPlates from source, you will require:

• Qt 4.4.0 or above
• OpenGL
• GLEW
• GDAL 1.3.2 or above
• CGAL 3.5 or above
• PROJ.4
• Boost 1.34 or above
• CMake 2.6.2 or above

Instructions on how to compile GPlates from source may be found in the GPlates source-code releases, in the files:

• DEPS.Linux and BUILD.Linux (on Linux)
• DEPS.OSX and BUILD.OSX (on MacOS X)
• DEPS.Windows and BUILD.Windows (on Windows)

GPlates is free software (also known as open-source software), licensed for distribution under the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2.

Download GPlates-compatible data

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Researchers in the EarthByte Project have made GPlates-compatible data available for use with GPlates.

A sample set of these data-files are also contained within the GPlates installation packages, and will be automatically installed with GPlates. Thanks to the EarthByte Project for making these data-files available!

Researchers in the Centre for Geodynamics at the Norwegian Geological Survey have made GPlates-compatible data available for use with GPlates; in particular:

• a sequence of time-dependent global dynamic topography raster images, created by Bernhard Steinberger at NGU

These data-files are also contained within the GPlates installation packages, and will be automatically installed with GPlates. Thanks to Bernhard Steinberger and the Centre for Geodynamics for making these data-files available!

Researchers in the California Institute of Technology have made GPlates-compatible data available for use with GPlates; in particular:

• Global reconstructions with continuously closing plates from 140 Ma to the present.

These data files, along with a corresponding paper, can be found here.

Load data in GPlates

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To load the global coastline file and the rotation file in GPlates:

1. Download each data file and save it to disk.
2. Pull down the GPlates File menu.
3. Select the operation Open Feature Collection….

To load a sequence of time-dependent raster images (for example, Bernhard Steinberger's dynamic topography images) in GPlates:

1. Download the file “dynamic-topography.zip”, save it to disk, and unzip it.
2. Pull down the GPlates File menu and select the operation Import Time-dependent Raster….
3. Click the Add Directory button.
4. Choose the “jpg” folder inside the “dynamic topography” folder. (Don't browse into the “jpg” folder; instead, click the folder once to select it, then press the Choose button.)
5. Choose the Next button of the dialog to finish the import wizard.

An animated screenshot of these data-sets may be found in the Animations section of the Screenshots page.