Belmopan through 250 million years

Belmopan lay at 2° north, the latitude of Mogadishu today.

The first dinosaurs

Belmopan lay on the equator.

Belmopan crosses the equator.

Heading north.

The great extinction

Belmopan lay at 21° north, the latitude of Hanoi today.

Homo sapiens

Belmopan lay at 17° north, its latitude today.

Belmopan today.

17° north. In 250 million years the plates have carried it some 8,800 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 2° north; 250 million years ago
Farthest south: 1° south; 220 million years ago
Farthest north: 21° north; 70 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 230 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 210 million years ago
Distance travelled: 8,800 kilometres; 250 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.