Lanzhou through 600 million years

Lanzhou lay at 36° north, the latitude of Valletta today.

Lanzhou crosses the equator.

Heading south.

The Cambrian explosion

Lanzhou lay at 3° south, the latitude of Kigali today.

Life reaches land

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

Lanzhou crosses the equator.

Heading north.

The first dinosaurs

Lanzhou lay at 68° north.

The great extinction

Lanzhou lay at 37° north, the latitude of Algiers today.

Homo sapiens

Lanzhou lay at 36° north, its latitude today.

Lanzhou today.

36° north. In 600 million years the plates have carried it some 42,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 36° north; 600 million years ago
Farthest south: 18° south; 480 million years ago
Farthest north: 71° north; 220 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 570 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 450 million years ago
Distance travelled: 42,000 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.