Mogadishu through 1 billion years

Mogadishu lay at 4° south, the latitude of Brazzaville today.

Mogadishu crosses the equator.

Heading north.

Mogadishu crosses the equator.

Heading south.

Mogadishu crosses the equator.

Heading north.

Mogadishu crosses the equator.

Heading south.

The Cambrian explosion

Mogadishu lay at 43° south.

Life reaches land

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

Farthest south.

Mogadishu lay at 68° south.

The first dinosaurs

Mogadishu lay at 34° south, the latitude of Santiago today.

The great extinction

Mogadishu lay at 16° south, the latitude of Brasília today.

Homo sapiens

Mogadishu lay at 2° north, its latitude today.

Mogadishu today.

2° north. In 1 billion years the plates have carried it some 42,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 4° south; 1 billion years ago
Farthest south: 68° south; 340 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 960 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 930 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 760 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 730 million years ago
Crossed the equator: the present day
Distance travelled: 42,000 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.