Lusaka through 650 million years

Lusaka lay at 28° south, the latitude of Bloemfontein today.

The Cambrian explosion

Lusaka lay at 50° south.

Life reaches land

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

Farthest south.

Lusaka lay at 86° south.

The first dinosaurs

Lusaka lay at 46° south.

The great extinction

Lusaka lay at 33° south, the latitude of Santiago today.

Homo sapiens

Lusaka lay at 16° south, its latitude today.

Lusaka today.

15° south. In 650 million years the plates have carried it some 35,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 28° south; 650 million years ago
Farthest south: 86° south; 350 million years ago
Distance travelled: 35,000 kilometres; 650 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.