Hangzhou through 1 billion years

Hangzhou lay at 30° north, the latitude of Giza today.

Farthest north.

Hangzhou lay at 86° north.

Hangzhou crosses the equator.

Heading south.

The Cambrian explosion

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

Life reaches land

Hangzhou lay at 14° south, the latitude of Lilongwe today.

Hangzhou crosses the equator.

Heading north.

The first dinosaurs

Hangzhou lay at 43° north, the latitude of Bishkek today.

The great extinction

Hangzhou lay at 34° north, the latitude of Beirut today.

Homo sapiens

Hangzhou lay at 30° north, its latitude today.

Hangzhou today.

30° north. In 1 billion years the plates have carried it some 61,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 30° north; 1 billion years ago
Farthest south: 15° south; 480 million years ago
Farthest north: 86° north; 780 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 570 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 440 million years ago
Distance travelled: 61,000 kilometres; 1 billion 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.