Asmara through 850 million years

Asmara lay at 5° south, the latitude of Victoria today.

The Cambrian explosion

Asmara lay at 50° south.

Farthest south.

Asmara lay at 63° south.

Life reaches land

Asmara lay at 54° south.

The first dinosaurs

Asmara lay at 20° south, the latitude of Sucre today.

The great extinction

Asmara lay at 3° south, the latitude of Kigali today.

Asmara crosses the equator.

Heading north.

Homo sapiens

Asmara lay at 15° north, its latitude today.

Asmara today.

15° north. In 850 million years the plates have carried it some 38,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 5° south; 850 million years ago
Farthest south: 63° south; 500 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 50 million years ago
Distance travelled: 38,000 kilometres; 850 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.