Antananarivo through 1 billion years

Antananarivo lay at 6° south, the latitude of Jakarta today.

Antananarivo crosses the equator.

Heading north.

Antananarivo crosses the equator.

Heading south.

Antananarivo crosses the equator.

Heading north.

Antananarivo crosses the equator.

Heading south.

The Cambrian explosion

Antananarivo lay at 42° south, the latitude of Wellington today.

Life reaches land

Antananarivo lay at 37° south, the latitude of Melbourne today.

Farthest south.

Antananarivo lay at 73° south.

The first dinosaurs

Antananarivo lay at 39° south, the latitude of Melbourne today.

The great extinction

Antananarivo lay at 37° south, the latitude of Melbourne today.

Homo sapiens

Antananarivo lay at 19° south, its latitude today.

Antananarivo today.

19° south. In 1 billion years the plates have carried it some 45,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 6° south; 1 billion years ago
Farthest south: 73° south; 340 million years ago
Farthest north: 3° north; 750 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 950 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 940 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 760 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 730 million years ago
Distance travelled: 45,000 kilometres; 1 billion 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.