Istanbul through 310 million years

Istanbul lay at 3° south, the latitude of Gitega today.

Istanbul crosses the equator.

Heading north.

The first dinosaurs

Istanbul lay at 29° north, the latitude of New Delhi today.

The great extinction

Istanbul lay at 31° north, the latitude of Huzhou today.

Homo sapiens

Istanbul lay at 41° north, its latitude today.

Istanbul today.

41° north. In 310 million years the plates have carried it some 12,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 3° south; 310 million years ago
Farthest south: 3° south; 310 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 290 million years ago
Distance travelled: 12,000 kilometres; 310 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.