Colombo through 1 billion years

Colombo lay at 8° south, the latitude of Dar es Salaam today.

Colombo crosses the equator.

Heading north.

Colombo crosses the equator.

Heading south.

The Cambrian explosion

Colombo lay at 40° south.

Life reaches land

Colombo lay at 32° south.

Farthest south.

Colombo lay at 80° south.

The first dinosaurs

Colombo lay at 46° south.

The great extinction

Colombo lay at 40° south.

Colombo crosses the equator.

Heading north.

Homo sapiens

Colombo lay at 7° north, its latitude today.

Colombo today.

7° north. In 1 billion years the plates have carried it some 52,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 8° south; 1 billion years ago
Farthest south: 80° south; 340 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 770 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 720 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 20 million years ago
Distance travelled: 52,000 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.