One chapter in James Cheshire’s Library of Lost Maps (reviewed here) is dedicated to the maps of the ocean floor created by Bruce Heezen and Marie Tharp. A new post on the book’s website now explores the maps in chronological order.

There so much fantastic material that has already been written about Tharp and her legacy (I’ve listed some at the end), but nowhere have I found the most signficant maps she helped to create gathered in one place.

So I have created a chronology of these ocean floor maps to show how they became some of the most well-known and influential maps of the twentieth century. I know there are a few I’ve missed that are in National Geographic atlases and on globes, but the fifteen below show the most comprehensive evolution of the ocean floor mapping work I’ve found to date.

Previously: The Library of Lost Maps.