Kathmandu through 600 million years

Kathmandu lay at 10° north, the latitude of Cần Thơ today.

Kathmandu crosses the equator.

Heading south.

The Cambrian explosion

Kathmandu lay at 23° south, the latitude of São Paulo today.

Life reaches land

Kathmandu lay at 24° south, the latitude of São Paulo today.

Farthest south.

Kathmandu lay at 64° south.

The first dinosaurs

Kathmandu lay at 40° south.

The great extinction

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

Kathmandu crosses the equator.

Heading north.

Homo sapiens

Kathmandu lay at 28° north, its latitude today.

Kathmandu today.

28° north. In 600 million years the plates have carried it some 34,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 10° north; 600 million years ago
Farthest south: 64° south; 330 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 590 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 50 million years ago
Distance travelled: 34,000 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.