Monaco through 600 million years

Monaco lay at 15° south, the latitude of Lusaka today.

The Cambrian explosion

Monaco lay at 48° south.

Life reaches land

Monaco lay at 72° south.

Farthest south.

Monaco lay at 73° south.

Monaco crosses the equator.

Heading north.

The first dinosaurs

Monaco lay at 22° north, the latitude of Hong Kong today.

The great extinction

Monaco lay at 33° north, the latitude of Bengbu today.

Homo sapiens

Monaco lay at 44° north, its latitude today.

Monaco today.

44° north. In 600 million years the plates have carried it some 32,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 15° south; 600 million years ago
Farthest south: 73° south; 450 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 310 million years ago
Distance travelled: 32,000 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.