Caracas through 1 billion years

Caracas lay at 43° south, the latitude of Wellington today.

Farthest south.

Caracas lay at 75° south.

The Cambrian explosion

Caracas lay at 63° south.

Life reaches land

Caracas lay at 45° south.

Caracas crosses the equator.

Heading north.

The first dinosaurs

Caracas lay at 2° south, the latitude of Kigali today.

Caracas crosses the equator.

Heading north.

The great extinction

Caracas lay at 6° north, the latitude of Monrovia today.

Homo sapiens

Caracas lay at 10° north, its latitude today.

Caracas today.

11° north. In 1 billion years the plates have carried it some 50,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 43° south; 1 billion years ago
Farthest south: 75° south; 870 million years ago
Farthest north: 12° north; 120 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 250 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 250 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 200 million years ago
Distance travelled: 50,000 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.