Nanchang through 1 billion years

Nanchang lay at 27° north, the latitude of Lucknow today.

Farthest north.

Nanchang lay at 86° north.

Nanchang crosses the equator.

Heading south.

The Cambrian explosion

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

Life reaches land

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

Nanchang crosses the equator.

Heading north.

Nanchang crosses the equator.

Heading south.

The first dinosaurs

Nanchang lay at 40° north, the latitude of Ankara today.

The great extinction

Nanchang lay at 32° north, the latitude of Lahore today.

Homo sapiens

Nanchang lay at 29° north, its latitude today.

Nanchang today.

29° north. In 1 billion years the plates have carried it some 60,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 27° north; 1 billion years ago
Farthest south: 16° south; 480 million years ago
Farthest north: 86° north; 790 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 570 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 440 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 330 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 330 million years ago
Distance travelled: 60,000 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.