Trafalgar Square 320 million years ago
If I could travel back in time to around 320 million years ago (about 318 million years before the first humans appeared) I would find the ground beneath my London home lying some 6 degrees south of the equator.
Because of the slow movement of Earth’s tectonic plates over immense spans of time, the land I stand on today once occupied a latitude roughly comparable to parts of equatorial Indonesia or East Africa. Britain was not then a cool, temperate island on the edge of the North Atlantic, but part of a vast tropical world forming within the supercontinent of Pangaea.
Instead of London’s current damp and temperate weather I could enjoy the climate of the Late Carboniferous, which was warm, humid and lush. Atmospheric oxygen levels were significantly higher than modern levels, helping support enormous arthropods: dragonfly-like insects with wingspans approaching seventy centimetres, giant millipedes and other outsized invertebrates moved through the undergrowth.
What is now Britain lay within this humid equatorial belt for millions of years. Thick layers of plant material accumulated in waterlogged swamps where decay was slow and incomplete. Over immense spans of geological time, those buried organic layers were compressed and transformed into coal. This ancient tropical setting is one reason the British Isles possess such extensive coal deposits today.
You can discover the latitude of your home during the Late Carboniferous and other geological eras using the Paleolatitude map. Click anywhere on the interactive map and you can instantly view a chart showing that location’s changing latitude over time since 320 Ma. At the moment, the map does not provide climate details, but it promises that the first global paleotemperature reference frame is “coming soon”.
Also See
GPlates – an animated globe illustrating Earth’s evolution over millions of years
Ancient Earth – an interactive 3D globe spanning the entire history of life on Earth/p>
