São Paulo through 520 million years

São Paulo lay at 54° south.

Life reaches land

São Paulo lay at 40° south.

Farthest south.

São Paulo lay at 84° south.

The first dinosaurs

São Paulo lay at 37° south, the latitude of Melbourne today.

The great extinction

São Paulo lay at 30° south, the latitude of Maseru today.

Homo sapiens

São Paulo lay at 24° south, its latitude today.

São Paulo today.

24° south. In 520 million years the plates have carried it some 29,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 54° south; 520 million years ago
Farthest south: 84° south; 410 million years ago
Farthest north: 23° south; 120 million years ago
Distance travelled: 29,000 kilometres; 520 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.