Plotting Tools for Anyone Working in Deep Time
Overview
Extends the functionality of other plotting packages (notably 'ggplot2') to help facilitate the plotting of data over long time intervals, including, but not limited to, geological, evolutionary, and ecological data. The primary goal of 'deeptime' is to enable users to add highly customizable timescales to their visualizations. Other functions are also included to assist with other areas of deep time visualization.
__deeptime now requires R version 4.1 or higher__.
This new minor version of deeptime includes a new feature, some major bug fixes, and some minor housekeeping.
New features:
- Added
geom_text_clade()for adding clade labels to phylogenies when usingcoord_geo_radial()(#96)
Bug fixes:
- Fixed several edge cases of
coord_trans_xy()includingggforce::reflect()transformations,_reverse_scales, and capped axes (#57, #102) - Fixed
coord_geo()scale placement to now always be added outwards from the plot region (#47) - Previously, scales on the left and top were added inwards
Deprecation:
- Soft deprecated
disparity_through_time()andpanel.disparity(). These functions were never well supported and will be removed in a future version of deeptime to reduce maintenance overhead. Users are encouraged to usecoord_trans_xy()to achieve a similar plot withggplot2.
Miscellaneous:
- Swapped usage of the magrittr pipe operator (
%>%) to the base R pipe operator (|>) (#100)
From NEWS.md in the release
Install
Health
ERRORexamplesr-oldrel-macos-x86_64
Running examples in ‘deeptime-Ex.R’ failed
The error most likely occurred in:
> ### Name: geom_text_clade
> ### Title: Label clades on a phylogenetic tree plotted with ggtree
> ### Aliases: geom_text_clade
>
> ### ** Examples
>
> library(ggplot2)
> ## Don't show:
> if (require(ggtree) && require(phytools)) withAutoprint({ # examplesIf
+ ## End(Don't show)
+ library(ggtree)
+ library(phytools)
+ data(primate.tree)
+ # single annotation
+ revts(ggtree(primate.tree)) +
+ geom_text_clade(label = "Hominoidea", node = 114, extend = c(0.1, 0.1)) +
+ coord_geo_radial()
+
+ # data frame of clade labels
+ clades.df <- data.frame(
+ clade = c("Lorisoidea", "Lemuroidea", "Tarsioidea", "Ceboidea",
+ "Cercopithecoidea", "Hominoidea"),
+ node = c(166, 146, 144, 120, 95, 114)
+ )
+ revts(ggtree(primate.tree)) %<+% clades.df +
+ geom_text_clade(aes(label = clade), extend = c(0.1, 0.1)) +
+ coord_geo_radial()
+
+ # display with other tip data
+ data(primate.data)
+ activity
...[truncated]...
,
+ extend = c(0.1, 0.1)) + coord_geo_radial()
Warning in fortify(data, ...) : Arguments in `...` must be used.
✖ Problematic arguments:
• as.Date = as.Date
• yscale_mapping = yscale_mapping
• hang = hang
ℹ Did you misspell an argument name?
> data(primate.data)
> activity <- subset(primate.data, select = "Activity_pattern")
> revts(gheatmap(ggtree(primate.tree), activity, offset = -70, colnames = FALSE,
+ width = 0.03, color = NA)) %<+% clades.df + geom_text_clade(aes(label = clade),
+ extend = c(0.1, 0.1), position = position_nudge(x = 10)) + coord_geo_radial()
Warning in fortify(data, ...) : Arguments in `...` must be used.
✖ Problematic arguments:
• as.Date = as.Date
• yscale_mapping = yscale_mapping
• hang = hang
ℹ Did you misspell an argument name?
Scale for y is already present.
Adding another scale for y, which will replace the existing scale.
Error: <ggtree> object properties are invalid:
- @mapping must be <ggplot2::mapping>, not S3<data.frame>
Execution haltedERRORre-building of vignette outputsr-devel-windows-x86_64
Error(s) in re-building vignettes:
--- re-building 'coord.Rmd' using rmarkdown
--- finished re-building 'coord.Rmd'
--- re-building 'coord_geo.Rmd' using rmarkdown
--- finished re-building 'coord_geo.Rmd'
--- re-building 'geo.Rmd' using rmarkdown
Quitting from geo.Rmd:34-40 [unnamed-chunk-3]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
<error/rlang_error>
Error in `GET_macrostrat()`:
! Content not found. Check your request.
---
Backtrace:
▆
1. └─rmacrostrat::get_units(column_id = 489, interval_name = "Cretaceous")
2. └─rmacrostrat:::GET_macrostrat(...)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Error: processing vignette 'geo.Rmd' failed with diagnostics:
Content not found. Check your request.
--- failed re-building 'geo.Rmd'
--- re-building 'ggarrange2.Rmd' using rmarkdown
--- finished re-building 'ggarrange2.Rmd'
--- re-building 'phylogenies.Rmd' using rmarkdown
--- finished re-building 'phylogenies.Rmd'
--- re-building 'time.Rmd' using rmarkdown
--- finished re-building 'time.Rmd'
--- re-building 'traits.Rmd' using rmarkdown
--- finished re-building 'traits.Rmd'
SUMMARY: processing the following file failed:
'geo.Rmd'
Error: Vignette re-building failed.
Execution halted- ERROR11 OK, 2 ERRORNow
- ERROR12 OK, 1 ERROR2026-07-11
- OK13 OK2026-06-22
- ERROR12 OK, 1 ERROR2026-06-19
- OK13 OK2026-06-09
- ERROR12 OK, 1 ERROR2026-06-08
Show 7 earlier changesHide 7 earlier changes
- OK13 OK2026-05-24
- ERROR11 OK, 2 ERROR2026-05-17
- OK13 OK2026-05-10
- ERROR12 OK, 1 ERROR2026-05-03
- OK14 OK2026-04-10
- ERROR13 OK, 1 ERROR2026-04-09
- OK14 OK2026-03-10
Documentation
- Help pages
- 33 (3 internal)includes a package overview page
- Examples that run
- 100%22 run in a plain check (8 of them under a condition)
- Exported functions with examples
- 85%
- Documented parameters
- 85%
- Return-value docs
- 35%
- Help pages citing references
- 0%
Downloads
Repository
- PRs merged (all time)
- 86%
- Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed issues
- 29
- Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed PRs
- 0
Stars over time
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15 development-tooling and community-health practices detected across 9 families in the upstream repository
Checks run against github.com/willgearty/deeptime on 2026-10-18.
The R CMD check workflow runs on Linux, macOS and Windows, and on R-devel
The repository owner accepts GitHub Sponsors
GitHub Pages site last deployed 2026-10-14 · The repository has a site deploy workflow
pkgdown site last built 2026-07-10
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This repository shows signs of AI coding tools.
- Claude Codefirst seen 2026-10-13Pull request it wrote: opened by a project member
Dependencies
Installing deeptime adds 44 packages (25 with compiled code, 38 MB of source tarballs). Heaviest: stringi 11 MB, ggplot2 6.0 MB, deeptimedata 2.6 MB.
Code & Tests
Datasets
People & History
Pick two releases to compare their code metrics.
- 2.4.0Latest
- RR 4.6.0 released · 2026-04-24
- 2.3.12025-11-26 · diff ↗
- 2.3.0
- 2.2.02025-06-19 · diff ↗ ·
added 5 exports
facet_grid_geo, facet_nested_geo, facet_nested_wrap_geo, facet_wrap_geo, geom_text_phylo - RR 4.5.0 released · 2025-04-11
- 2.1.02024-10-26 · diff ↗ ·
added 4 exports
FacetNestedColor, FacetNestedWrapColor, facet_nested_color, facet_nested_wrap_color - 2.0.02024-08-19 · diff ↗ ·
added 6 exports
GuideGeo, geo_grob, geo_pattern, grid.pattern_geo, guide_geo, scale_fill_geopattern - RR 4.4.0 released · 2024-04-24
- 1.1.12024-03-08 · diff ↗
- 1.1.02024-03-05 · diff ↗ ·
added 8 exports
CoordGeoRadial, FacetGridColor, FacetWrapColor, coord_geo_radial, facet_grid_color, facet_wrap_color, geom_points_range, stat_points_range - RR 4.3.0 released · 2023-04-21
- 1.0.1
- 1.0.0
- 0.3.02022-11-09 · diff ↗ ·
added 6 exports
CoordGeoPolar, coord_geo_polar, scale_color_geo, scale_colour_geo, scale_discrete_geo, scale_fill_geo - 0.2.32022-09-20 · diff ↗
Package metadata
- First published
- 2021-07-23
- Total releases
- 16 / 5 yrs
- License
- GPL (>= 3) OSI
- Minimum R
- ≥ 4.1
- Bundled data
- 6.2 KB / 6 files
- Download size
- 7.4 MB
Cite
Cite this package
Run in R for the authors' entry:
citation("deeptime")The package provides a citation file, so citation() returns the authors' own entry.
It points to 10.1080/20964471.2025.2537516.
Cite the R Observatory
For a number measured here: a download total, a coverage figure, an archival date.
From data release v2026-10-21, which the citation names so these numbers can be found later. More on citing and the projects behind them.