Tongliao through 600 million years

Tongliao lay at 37° north, the latitude of Seoul today.

The Cambrian explosion

Tongliao lay at 23° north, the latitude of Ahmedabad today.

Tongliao crosses the equator.

Heading south.

Life reaches land

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

Tongliao crosses the equator.

Heading north.

The first dinosaurs

Tongliao lay at 53° north, the latitude of Dublin today.

Farthest north.

Tongliao lay at 62° north.

The great extinction

Tongliao lay at 47° north, the latitude of Budapest today.

Homo sapiens

Tongliao lay at 44° north, its latitude today.

Tongliao today.

44° north. In 600 million years the plates have carried it some 40,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 37° north; 600 million years ago
Farthest south: 6° south; 460 million years ago
Farthest north: 62° north; 200 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 500 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 450 million years ago
Distance travelled: 40,000 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.