Montevideo through 1 billion years

Montevideo lay at 8° south, the latitude of Dili today.

Montevideo crosses the equator.

Heading north.

The Cambrian explosion

Montevideo lay at 40° south.

Life reaches land

Montevideo lay at 26° south, the latitude of Pretoria today.

Farthest south.

Montevideo lay at 82° south.

The first dinosaurs

Montevideo lay at 48° south.

The great extinction

Montevideo lay at 40° south, the latitude of Wellington today.

Homo sapiens

Montevideo lay at 35° south, its latitude today.

Montevideo today.

35° south. In 1 billion years the plates have carried it some 52,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 8° south; 1 billion years ago
Farthest south: 82° south; 410 million years ago
Farthest north: 1° north; 940 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 950 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 940 million years ago
Distance travelled: 52,000 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.