Kumasi through 1 billion years

Kumasi lay at 35° south, the latitude of Canberra today.

Farthest south.

Kumasi lay at 87° south.

The Cambrian explosion

Kumasi lay at 84° south.

Life reaches land

Kumasi lay at 60° south.

The first dinosaurs

Kumasi lay at 13° south, the latitude of Apia today.

Kumasi crosses the equator.

Heading north.

The great extinction

Kumasi lay at 6° south, the latitude of Jakarta today.

Kumasi crosses the equator.

Heading north.

Homo sapiens

Kumasi lay at 7° north, its latitude today.

Kumasi today.

7° north. In 1 billion years the plates have carried it some 52,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 35° south; 1 billion years ago
Farthest south: 87° south; 710 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 120 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 110 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 20 million years ago
Distance travelled: 52,000 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.