Epeiric sea
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An epeiric sea (also known as an epicontinental sea) is a large shallow sea that either extends far into a continent, such as the Persian Gulf,[1] or overlies a large part of a continent.
Epeiric seas are usually associated with the marine transgressions of the early (and current) Cenozoic era and may be semi-cyclic—during eras of glacial recession given a period of low mountains coupled with a warming under the influence of plate tectonics. They can be warm or cold; indeed, several were present at the end of the last Ice Age, when sea levels rose more rapidly than some areas could isostatically adjust. Modern examples are the Persian Gulf, the North Sea, and Hudson Bay.
Notable North American examples are the miles of sea-bed deposits east of the Sierra Nevada mountains and west of the continental divide formed by the Rockies carved out by the Colorado River valley known as the Grand Canyon and on grander scale, the whole of the interior of the North American continental heartlands, from Great Slave Lake, Great Bear Lake and Hudson Bay above the Arctic Circle southerly through the Great Lakes region westerly through the whole of the Missouri–Mississippi rivers drainage basin east and north of the Appalachian Mountain range including all of Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and other southern United States states west to the Rockies and northern Mexico[2]—in other words the entirety of the great plains and bordering hill regions in Canada through to the southern USA. The eastern regions are the areas, not coincidentally, threatened by rising sea levels if global warming melts the next quarter of the remaining ice caps.
[edit] Examples
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ McCabe, Peter J. (1992). Judith Totman Parrish. ed. Controls on the Distribution and Quality of Cretaceous Coals. Geological Society of America. ISBN 0813722675.
- ^ Redfern, Ron (1983). The making of a continent. New York Times Book Co., Inc. ISBN 0-8129-1079-6.
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