Calgary currently sits at about 51.04°N latitude. Just 115 million years ago, though, the city was farther north around 58.11°N, which is about the same latitude as La Crete in northern Alberta.
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If today’s Calgary had existed 320 million years ago on Pangea, it would have been near 8.55°N: firmly within the tropics, and at roughly the same latitude as the city of Merida, Venezuela.
The land beneath the cities of Toronto, Montreal, and St. John’s all followed roughly the same trajectory through time, sitting on Pangea near 11 degrees south of the equator some 300+ million years ago.
This research is significant for paleontologists as they seek to understand our planet’s past.
“Rocks and fossils are generally displaced relative to the location at which they were deposited,” the team said in the study. Diving into a place’s paleolatitude is important to know how evidence of tropical species wound up in northern regions, for instance.
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