Ottawa through 1 billion years

Ottawa lay at 11° south, the latitude of Moroni today.

Farthest south.

Ottawa lay at 45° south.

The Cambrian explosion

Ottawa lay at 18° south, the latitude of Santa Cruz de la Sierra today.

Life reaches land

Ottawa lay at 17° south, the latitude of La Paz today.

Ottawa crosses the equator.

Heading north.

The first dinosaurs

Ottawa lay at 14° north, the latitude of Tegucigalpa today.

The great extinction

Ottawa lay at 44° north, the latitude of Monaco today.

Homo sapiens

Ottawa lay at 45° north, its latitude today.

Ottawa today.

45° north. In 1 billion years the plates have carried it some 49,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 11° south; 1 billion years ago
Farthest south: 45° south; 870 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 310 million years ago
Distance travelled: 49,000 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.