Melbourne through 450 million years

Melbourne lay at 15° north, the latitude of Khartoum today.

Melbourne crosses the equator.

Heading south.

The first dinosaurs

Melbourne lay at 67° south.

Farthest south.

Melbourne lay at 79° south.

The great extinction

Melbourne lay at 59° south.

Homo sapiens

Melbourne lay at 38° south, its latitude today.

Melbourne today.

38° south. In 450 million years the plates have carried it some 26,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 15° north; 450 million years ago
Farthest south: 79° south; 150 million years ago
Farthest north: 17° north; 440 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 430 million years ago
Distance travelled: 26,000 kilometres; 450 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.