Freetown through 600 million years

Freetown lay at 63° south.

Farthest south.

Freetown lay at 83° south.

The Cambrian explosion

Freetown lay at 79° south.

Life reaches land

Freetown lay at 58° south.

The first dinosaurs

Freetown lay at 6° south, the latitude of Jakarta today.

Freetown crosses the equator.

Heading north.

Freetown crosses the equator.

Heading south.

The great extinction

Freetown lay at 1° south, the latitude of Nusantara today.

Freetown crosses the equator.

Heading north.

Homo sapiens

Freetown lay at 8° north, its latitude today.

Freetown today.

8° north. In 600 million years the plates have carried it some 31,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 63° south; 600 million years ago
Farthest south: 83° south; 570 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 200 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 80 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 30 million years ago
Distance travelled: 31,000 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.