Hanzhong through 600 million years

Hanzhong lay at 24° north, the latitude of Taichung today.

Hanzhong crosses the equator.

Heading south.

The Cambrian explosion

Hanzhong lay at 16° south, the latitude of La Paz today.

Life reaches land

Hanzhong lay at 24° south, the latitude of Gaborone today.

Hanzhong crosses the equator.

Heading north.

The first dinosaurs

Hanzhong lay at 39° north, the latitude of Washington, D.C. today.

Farthest north.

Hanzhong lay at 58° north.

The great extinction

Hanzhong lay at 34° north, the latitude of Kabul today.

Homo sapiens

Hanzhong lay at 33° north, its latitude today.

Hanzhong today.

33° north. In 600 million years the plates have carried it some 37,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 24° north; 600 million years ago
Farthest south: 25° south; 510 million years ago
Farthest north: 58° north; 210 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 580 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 430 million years ago
Distance travelled: 37,000 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.