New York City through 600 million years

New York City lay at 34° south, the latitude of Santiago today.

The Cambrian explosion

New York City lay at 20° south, the latitude of Sucre today.

Life reaches land

New York City lay at 21° south.

Farthest south.

New York City lay at 39° south.

New York City crosses the equator.

Heading north.

The first dinosaurs

New York City lay at 9° north, the latitude of Abuja today.

The great extinction

New York City lay at 39° north, the latitude of Baoding today.

Homo sapiens

New York City lay at 41° north, its latitude today.

New York City today.

41° north. In 600 million years the plates have carried it some 31,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 34° south; 600 million years ago
Farthest south: 39° south; 410 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 290 million years ago
Distance travelled: 31,000 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.