Muscat through 850 million years

Muscat lay at 48° north, the latitude of Vienna today.

Farthest north.

Muscat lay at 62° north.

Muscat crosses the equator.

Heading south.

The Cambrian explosion

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

Farthest south.

Muscat lay at 48° south.

Life reaches land

Muscat lay at 43° south, the latitude of Wellington today.

The first dinosaurs

Muscat lay at 17° south, the latitude of Santa Cruz de la Sierra today.

Muscat crosses the equator.

Heading north.

The great extinction

Muscat lay at 2° north, the latitude of Mogadishu today.

Homo sapiens

Muscat lay at 23° north, its latitude today.

Muscat today.

24° north. In 850 million years the plates have carried it some 45,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 48° north; 850 million years ago
Farthest south: 48° south; 500 million years ago
Farthest north: 62° north; 790 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 590 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 80 million years ago
Distance travelled: 45,000 kilometres; 850 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.