Chenzhou through 1 billion years

Chenzhou lay at 25° north, the latitude of Dubai today.

Farthest north.

Chenzhou lay at 85° north.

Chenzhou crosses the equator.

Heading south.

The Cambrian explosion

Chenzhou lay at 10° south, the latitude of Luanda today.

Life reaches land

Chenzhou lay at 16° south, the latitude of Brasília today.

Chenzhou crosses the equator.

Heading north.

Chenzhou crosses the equator.

Heading south.

Chenzhou crosses the equator.

Heading north.

The first dinosaurs

Chenzhou lay at 36° north, the latitude of Valletta today.

The great extinction

Chenzhou lay at 28° north, the latitude of New Delhi today.

Homo sapiens

Chenzhou lay at 26° north, its latitude today.

Chenzhou today.

26° north. In 1 billion years the plates have carried it some 58,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 25° north; 1 billion years ago
Farthest south: 17° south; 510 million years ago
Farthest north: 85° north; 790 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 570 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 440 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 340 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 320 million years ago
Distance travelled: 58,000 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.