Guiyang through 700 million years

Guiyang lay at 36° north, the latitude of Tehran today.

Guiyang crosses the equator.

Heading south.

The Cambrian explosion

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

Life reaches land

Guiyang lay at 20° south, the latitude of Sucre today.

Guiyang crosses the equator.

Heading north.

Guiyang crosses the equator.

Heading north.

Guiyang crosses the equator.

Heading south.

Guiyang crosses the equator.

Heading north.

The first dinosaurs

Guiyang lay at 33° north, the latitude of Damascus today.

Farthest north.

Guiyang lay at 52° north.

The great extinction

Guiyang lay at 28° north, the latitude of Kathmandu today.

Homo sapiens

Guiyang lay at 27° north, its latitude today.

Guiyang today.

27° north. In 700 million years the plates have carried it some 42,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 36° north; 700 million years ago
Farthest south: 22° south; 510 million years ago
Farthest north: 52° north; 200 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 580 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 430 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 420 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 370 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 340 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 320 million years ago
Distance travelled: 42,000 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.