Dubai through 600 million years

Dubai lay at 9° north, the latitude of Addis Ababa today.

The Cambrian explosion

Dubai lay at 36° south, the latitude of Canberra today.

Farthest south.

Dubai lay at 51° south.

Life reaches land

Dubai lay at 46° south.

The first dinosaurs

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

Dubai crosses the equator.

Heading north.

The great extinction

Dubai lay at 4° north, the latitude of Yaoundé today.

Homo sapiens

Dubai lay at 25° north, its latitude today.

Dubai today.

25° north. In 600 million years the plates have carried it some 28,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 9° north; 600 million years ago
Farthest south: 51° south; 500 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 590 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 100 million years ago
Distance travelled: 28,000 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.