By making use of real information about the continental and oceanic surface distribution of the Earth, and cloudiness data from the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP), we have studied the large-scale cloudiness behavior according to latitude and surface types (ice, water, vegetation and desert). These empirical relationships are used here to reconstruct the possible cloud distribution of historical epochs of the Earth history such as the Late Cretaceous (90 Ma ago), the Late Triassic (230 Ma ago), the Mississippian (340 Ma ago), and the Late Cambrian (500 Ma ago), when the landmass distributions were di®erent from today's. This information is used here to simulate the photometric variability of these planets according to their different geographical distribution.