Publication Date:
2018-02-06
Description:
Plate tectonic reconstructions for the Cretaceous have assumed that the major
continental blocks—Eurasia, Greenland, North America, South America, Africa, India,
Australia, and Antarctica—had separated from one another by the end of the Early
Cretaceous, and that deep ocean passages connected the Pacific, Tethyan, Atlantic, and
Indian Ocean basins. North America, Eurasia, and Africa were crossed by shallow
meridional seaways. This classic view of Cretaceous paleogeography may be incorrect.
The revised view of the Early Cretaceous is one of three large continental blocks—
North America–Eurasia, South America–Antarctica-India-Madagascar-Australia;
and Africa—with large contiguous land areas surrounded by shallow epicontinental
seas. There was a large open Pacific basin, a wide eastern Tethys, and a circum-
African Seaway extending from the western Tethys (“Mediterranean”) region
through the North and South Atlantic into the juvenile Indian Ocean between
Madagascar-India and Africa. During the Early Cretaceous the deep passage from
the Central Atlantic to the Pacific was blocked by blocks of northern Central America
and by the Caribbean plate. There were no deep-water passages to the Arctic. Until
the Late Cretaceous the Atlantic-Indian Ocean complex was a long, narrow, sinuous
ocean basin extending off the Tethys and around Africa.
Deep passages connecting the western Tethys with the Central Atlantic, the
Central Atlantic with the Pacific, and the South Atlantic with the developing Indian
Ocean appeared in the Late Cretaceous. There were many island land areas surrounded
by shallow epicontinental seas at high sea-level stands.
Type:
Book chapter
,
NonPeerReviewed
Format:
text
DOI:
10.1130/0-8137-2332-9
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