Dazhou through 700 million years

Dazhou lay at 35° north, the latitude of Kabul today.

Dazhou crosses the equator.

Heading south.

The Cambrian explosion

Dazhou lay at 16° south, the latitude of Lusaka today.

Life reaches land

Dazhou lay at 23° south, the latitude of Rio de Janeiro today.

Dazhou crosses the equator.

Heading north.

The first dinosaurs

Dazhou lay at 38° north, the latitude of Seoul today.

Farthest north.

Dazhou lay at 56° north.

The great extinction

Dazhou lay at 33° north, the latitude of Tripoli today.

Homo sapiens

Dazhou lay at 31° north, its latitude today.

Dazhou today.

31° north. In 700 million years the plates have carried it some 44,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 35° north; 700 million years ago
Farthest south: 24° south; 510 million years ago
Farthest north: 56° north; 210 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 580 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 430 million years ago
Distance travelled: 44,000 kilometres; 700 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.