Quito through 410 million years

Quito lay at 49° south.

The first dinosaurs

Quito lay at 12° south, the latitude of Lima today.

Quito crosses the equator.

Heading north.

Quito crosses the equator.

Heading south.

The great extinction

Quito lay at 3° south, the latitude of Gitega today.

Homo sapiens

Quito lay on the equator.

Quito today.

0° south. In 410 million years the plates have carried it some 16,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 49° south; 410 million years ago
Farthest south: 49° south; 410 million years ago
Farthest north: 1° north; 120 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 150 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 110 million years ago
Distance travelled: 16,000 kilometres; 410 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.