Shiyan through 600 million years

Shiyan lay at 27° north, the latitude of Lucknow today.

Shiyan crosses the equator.

Heading south.

The Cambrian explosion

Shiyan lay at 13° south, the latitude of Apia today.

Life reaches land

Shiyan lay at 22° south, the latitude of Windhoek today.

Shiyan crosses the equator.

Heading north.

The first dinosaurs

Shiyan lay at 40° north, the latitude of Madrid today.

Farthest north.

Shiyan lay at 57° north.

The great extinction

Shiyan lay at 35° north, the latitude of Kabul today.

Homo sapiens

Shiyan lay at 33° north, its latitude today.

Shiyan today.

33° north. In 600 million years the plates have carried it some 37,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 27° north; 600 million years ago
Farthest south: 22° south; 480 million years ago
Farthest north: 57° north; 210 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 570 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 430 million years ago
Distance travelled: 37,000 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.