London through 600 million years

London lay at 41° south, the latitude of Wellington today.

The Cambrian explosion

London lay at 63° south.

Life reaches land

London lay at 54° south.

London crosses the equator.

Heading north.

The first dinosaurs

London lay at 26° north, the latitude of Chenzhou today.

The great extinction

London lay at 41° north, the latitude of Zhangjiakou today.

Homo sapiens

London lay at 51° north, its latitude today.

London today.

52° north. In 600 million years the plates have carried it some 34,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 41° south; 600 million years ago
Farthest south: 65° south; 530 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 330 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.