Hengshui through 1 billion years

Hengshui lay at 36° north, the latitude of Algiers today.

Hengshui crosses the equator.

Heading south.

Farthest north.

Hengshui lay at 65° north.

The Cambrian explosion

Hengshui lay at 20° north, the latitude of Naypyidaw today.

Hengshui crosses the equator.

Heading south.

Life reaches land

Hengshui lay at 9° south, the latitude of Luanda today.

Hengshui crosses the equator.

Heading north.

The first dinosaurs

Hengshui lay at 51° north, the latitude of Brussels today.

The great extinction

Hengshui lay at 40° north, the latitude of Madrid today.

Homo sapiens

Hengshui lay at 38° north, its latitude today.

Hengshui today.

38° north. In 1 billion years the plates have carried it some 62,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 36° north; 1 billion years ago
Farthest south: 11° south; 460 million years ago
Farthest north: 65° north; 720 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 870 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 870 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 500 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 450 million years ago
Distance travelled: 62,000 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.