Thimphu through 600 million years

Thimphu lay at 11° north, the latitude of Ho Chi Minh City today.

Thimphu crosses the equator.

Heading south.

The Cambrian explosion

Thimphu lay at 20° south, the latitude of Sucre today.

Life reaches land

Thimphu lay at 20° south, the latitude of Sucre today.

Farthest south.

Thimphu lay at 65° south.

The first dinosaurs

Thimphu lay at 42° south, the latitude of Wellington today.

The great extinction

Thimphu lay at 21° south, the latitude of Windhoek today.

Thimphu crosses the equator.

Heading north.

Homo sapiens

Thimphu lay at 27° north, its latitude today.

Thimphu today.

27° north. In 600 million years the plates have carried it some 35,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 11° north; 600 million years ago
Farthest south: 65° south; 330 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 580 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 50 million years ago
Distance travelled: 35,000 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.