Changzhou through 600 million years

Changzhou lay at 30° north, the latitude of Cairo today.

The Cambrian explosion

Changzhou lay at 13° north, the latitude of Bengaluru today.

Changzhou crosses the equator.

Heading south.

Life reaches land

Changzhou lay at 15° south, the latitude of Lusaka today.

Changzhou crosses the equator.

Heading north.

The first dinosaurs

Changzhou lay at 44° north, the latitude of San Marino today.

Farthest north.

Changzhou lay at 53° north.

The great extinction

Changzhou lay at 35° north, the latitude of Busan today.

Homo sapiens

Changzhou lay at 32° north, its latitude today.

Changzhou today.

32° north. In 600 million years the plates have carried it some 40,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 30° north; 600 million years ago
Farthest south: 18° south; 460 million years ago
Farthest north: 53° north; 210 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 510 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 440 million years ago
Distance travelled: 40,000 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.