Liaocheng through 1 billion years

Liaocheng lay at 38° north, the latitude of Seoul today.

Liaocheng crosses the equator.

Heading south.

Farthest north.

Liaocheng lay at 65° north.

The Cambrian explosion

Liaocheng lay at 19° north, the latitude of Port-au-Prince today.

Liaocheng crosses the equator.

Heading south.

Life reaches land

Liaocheng lay at 10° south, the latitude of Luanda today.

Liaocheng crosses the equator.

Heading north.

The first dinosaurs

Liaocheng lay at 50° north, the latitude of Luxembourg today.

The great extinction

Liaocheng lay at 39° north, the latitude of Pyongyang today.

Homo sapiens

Liaocheng lay at 37° north, its latitude today.

Liaocheng today.

36° north. In 1 billion years the plates have carried it some 62,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 38° north; 1 billion years ago
Farthest south: 12° 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: 510 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 440 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.