Xiangyang through 700 million years

Xiangyang lay at 38° north, the latitude of Ashgabat today.

Xiangyang crosses the equator.

Heading south.

The Cambrian explosion

Xiangyang lay at 12° south, the latitude of Moroni today.

Life reaches land

Xiangyang lay at 21° south.

Xiangyang crosses the equator.

Heading north.

The first dinosaurs

Xiangyang lay at 41° north, the latitude of New York City today.

Farthest north.

Xiangyang lay at 57° north.

The great extinction

Xiangyang lay at 34° north, the latitude of Rabat today.

Homo sapiens

Xiangyang lay at 32° north, its latitude today.

Xiangyang today.

32° north. In 700 million years the plates have carried it some 45,000 kilometres.

latitude through time

Oldest position in the model: 38° north; 700 million years ago
Farthest south: 21° south; 480 million years ago
Farthest north: 57° north; 210 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 570 million years ago
Crossed the equator: 440 million years ago
Distance travelled: 45,000 kilometres; 700 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.