Giza through 600 million years

Giza lay at 18° south, the latitude of Harare today.

The Cambrian explosion

Giza lay at 55° south.

Farthest south.

Giza lay at 72° south.

Life reaches land

Giza lay at 68° south.

The first dinosaurs

Giza lay at 4° south, the latitude of Gitega today.

Giza crosses the equator.

Heading south.

The great extinction

Giza lay at 12° north, the latitude of Ouagadougou today.

Homo sapiens

Giza lay at 30° north, its latitude today.

Giza today.

30° north. In 600 million years the plates have carried it some 29,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 18° south; 600 million years ago
Farthest south: 72° south; 500 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 220 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 150 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 140 million years ago
Distance travelled: 29,000 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.