Amman through 600 million years

Amman lay at 3° south, the latitude of Gitega today.

The Cambrian explosion

Amman lay at 51° south.

Farthest south.

Amman lay at 67° south.

Life reaches land

Amman lay at 64° south.

The first dinosaurs

Amman lay at 4° south, the latitude of Kinshasa today.

Amman crosses the equator.

Heading south.

Amman crosses the equator.

Heading north.

The great extinction

Amman lay at 13° north, the latitude of Bamako today.

Homo sapiens

Amman lay at 32° north, its latitude today.

Amman today.

32° north. In 600 million years the plates have carried it some 30,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 3° south; 600 million years ago
Farthest south: 67° south; 500 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 220 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 160 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 140 million years ago
Distance travelled: 30,000 kilometres; 600 million years

other places

Positions come from the plate model of Merdith and colleagues (2021), through the GPlates Web Service of the EarthByte Group at the University of Sydney. The globe shows today's coastlines carried back with their plates, not the shorelines of the time, so it does not say whether a place was land or sea. Cities and their coordinates come from Wikidata.