Ürümqi through 250 million years

Ürümqi lay at 55° north, the latitude of Vilnius today.

The first dinosaurs

Ürümqi lay at 65° north.

Farthest north.

Ürümqi lay at 74° north.

The great extinction

Ürümqi lay at 41° north, the latitude of Istanbul today.

Homo sapiens

Ürümqi lay at 44° north, its latitude today.

Ürümqi today.

44° north. In 250 million years the plates have carried it some 9,100 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 55° north; 250 million years ago
Farthest south: 41° north; 70 million years ago
Farthest north: 74° north; 210 million years ago
Distance travelled: 9,100 kilometres; 250 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.