Qinzhou through 1 billion years

Qinzhou lay at 22° north, the latitude of Vadodara today.

Farthest north.

Qinzhou lay at 83° north.

Qinzhou crosses the equator.

Heading south.

The Cambrian explosion

Qinzhou lay at 13° south, the latitude of Lima today.

Life reaches land

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

Qinzhou crosses the equator.

Heading north.

Qinzhou crosses the equator.

Heading north.

Qinzhou crosses the equator.

Heading north.

The first dinosaurs

Qinzhou lay at 31° north, the latitude of Cairo today.

The great extinction

Qinzhou lay at 24° north, the latitude of Dhaka today.

Homo sapiens

Qinzhou lay at 22° north, its latitude today.

Qinzhou today.

22° north. In 1 billion years the plates have carried it some 56,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 22° north; 1 billion years ago
Farthest south: 19° south; 560 million years ago
Farthest north: 83° north; 800 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 580 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 430 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 420 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 360 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 360 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 310 million years ago
Distance travelled: 56,000 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.