Windhoek through 650 million years

Windhoek lay at 36° south, the latitude of Canberra today.

The Cambrian explosion

Windhoek lay at 51° south.

Life reaches land

Windhoek lay at 31° south.

Farthest south.

Windhoek lay at 85° south.

The first dinosaurs

Windhoek lay at 46° south.

The great extinction

Windhoek lay at 38° south, the latitude of Melbourne today.

Homo sapiens

Windhoek lay at 23° south, its latitude today.

Windhoek today.

23° south. In 650 million years the plates have carried it some 36,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 36° south; 650 million years ago
Farthest south: 85° south; 410 million years ago
Distance travelled: 36,000 kilometres; 650 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.