Djibouti through 850 million years

Djibouti lay at 5° south, the latitude of Victoria today.

Djibouti crosses the equator.

Heading north.

Djibouti crosses the equator.

Heading south.

The Cambrian explosion

Djibouti lay at 46° south.

Life reaches land

Djibouti lay at 49° south.

Farthest south.

Djibouti lay at 61° south.

The first dinosaurs

Djibouti lay at 24° south, the latitude of São Paulo today.

The great extinction

Djibouti lay at 6° south, the latitude of Dodoma today.

Djibouti crosses the equator.

Heading north.

Homo sapiens

Djibouti lay at 11° north, its latitude today.

Djibouti today.

12° north. In 850 million years the plates have carried it some 39,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 5° south; 850 million years ago
Farthest south: 61° south; 350 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 820 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 770 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 40 million years ago
Distance travelled: 39,000 kilometres; 850 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.