Paleogeographic evolution of Asia in the Cenozoic reconstructed with the Terra Antiqua software

The ability to reconstruct the geologic evolution of the Earth as a system including the geosphere, atmosphere and biosphere interactions, is essential to understand the fate of our environment in the context of the Climate, Life and Energy crises of the new Anthropocene era. Scientists of tomorrow working on environmental changes require ever more detailed databases and maps to access and correlate the overwhelming mass of information stemming from the ongoing surge of environmental data and models. Earth System reconstructions are fundamental assets to assess potential sources and locations of key geo-resources that are now vital for the energy transition (e.g. raw materials, rare earth elements, subsurface storage, geothermal sites). Earth System reconstructions are also the best means to communicate past and future Life and Environmental evolutions, while providing consciousness of our role and situation in the immensity of Time and Nature. They convey these essential lessons in a didactic fashion for teachers and students, museums, or for governments and NGOs to make decisions and promote public awareness. Although Earth System reconstructions have long been recognized as essential, they have yet to deliver their full breakthrough potential combining various booming disciplines. As part of a large project over Asia, we review here the case of the intensely studied, yet still extremely controversial India-Asia collision with major implications on regional environmental, depositional and global climate transitions. Ongoing debates argue for radically different end-member models of the collision timing and its configuration, and of associated topographic growth in the collision zone. We present here new Asian paleogeographic reconstructions at 50 and 30 Ma that complement an existing set at 60, 40 and 20 Ma with updates. These integrate various end-members models of the India-Asia collision and associated topographic patterns and land-sea masks with implications on the locus, source and generation of resources. Results are provided online (https://map.paleoenvironment.eu/) in various model-relevant formats with associated database and discussion forums to comment an contribute to the amelioration of these maps and databases. We also present the latest developments of the user-friendly and open-source Terra Antiqua Q-GIS plugin (https://paleoenvironment.eu/terra-antiqua/) that has been used and specifically developed with new tools including data-driven and web-based applications