Wenzhou through 1 billion years

Wenzhou lay at 31° north, the latitude of Alexandria today.

Farthest north.

Wenzhou lay at 87° north.

Wenzhou crosses the equator.

Heading south.

The Cambrian explosion

Wenzhou lay at 4° south, the latitude of Gitega today.

Life reaches land

Wenzhou lay at 13° south, the latitude of Lima today.

Wenzhou crosses the equator.

Heading north.

Wenzhou crosses the equator.

Heading south.

The first dinosaurs

Wenzhou lay at 42° north, the latitude of Tbilisi today.

The great extinction

Wenzhou lay at 32° north, the latitude of East Jerusalem today.

Homo sapiens

Wenzhou lay at 28° north, its latitude today.

Wenzhou today.

28° north. In 1 billion years the plates have carried it some 61,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 31° north; 1 billion years ago
Farthest south: 13° 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: 330 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 330 million years ago
Distance travelled: 61,000 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.