When London Was on the Equator
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 th...
