Taipei through 1 billion years

Taipei lay at 33° north, the latitude of Tripoli today.

Farthest north.

Taipei lay at 87° north.

Taipei crosses the equator.

Heading south.

The Cambrian explosion

Taipei lay at 2° south, the latitude of Kigali today.

Life reaches land

Taipei lay at 10° south, the latitude of Luanda today.

Taipei crosses the equator.

Heading north.

Taipei crosses the equator.

Heading south.

Taipei crosses the equator.

Heading north.

The first dinosaurs

Taipei lay at 40° north, the latitude of Langfang today.

The great extinction

Taipei lay at 29° north, the latitude of Jinhua today.

Homo sapiens

Taipei lay at 25° north, its latitude today.

Taipei today.

25° north. In 1 billion years the plates have carried it some 60,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 33° north; 1 billion years ago
Farthest south: 10° south; 480 million years ago
Farthest north: 87° north; 790 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 570 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 440 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 340 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 320 million years ago
Distance travelled: 60,000 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.