Comment by geoalchimista

And palaeontology.

There may be tens of thousand of research papers behind each map shown in the OP. It is like solving a puzzle. At location X, Scientist A finds some clues in plate tectonics, Scientist B finds something in geochemistry, and Scientist C finds something in fossil records. Then they piece them together and if these stories all tell the same thing without a serious conflict, you can construct a point on that map. Now imagine doing this for thousands of different regions involving several generations of scientists, you get nice maps like these.

This Wikipedia page would be a nice read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Earth.