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During the early Paleozoic, southern and western New Mexico were submerged by a warm shallow sea that would come to be home to creatures including brachiopods, bryozoans, cartilaginous fishes, corals, graptolites, nautiloids, placoderms, and trilobites. During the Ordovician the state was home to algal reefs up to 300 feet high.
The map of North America with the Western Interior Seaway during the Campanian. The Western Interior Seaway (also called the Cretaceous Seaway, the Niobraran Sea, the North American Inland Sea, the Western Interior Sea and sometimes nicknamed "Hell's Aquarium") was a large inland sea that split the continent of North America into two landmasses for 34 million years.
The geologic history of the state began with its assembly during the Yavapai and Mazatzal orogenies 1750 to 1650 million years ago (Mya). This was followed by 200 million years of tectonic quiescence that ended in the Picuris orogeny. This event transformed the New Mexico crust into mature continental crust.
Mid-ocean ridge cross-section (cut-away view) A mid-ocean ridge (MOR) is a seafloor mountain system formed by plate tectonics. It typically has a depth of about 2,600 meters (8,500 ft) and rises about 2,000 meters (6,600 ft) above the deepest portion of an ocean basin. This feature is where seafloor spreading takes place along a divergent plate ...
The sea surface skin temperature (SSTskin), or ocean skin temperature, is the temperature of the sea surface as determined through its infrared spectrum (3.7–12 μm) and represents the temperature of the sublayer of water at a depth of 10–20 μm. [1] High-resolution data of skin temperature gained by satellites in passive infrared ...
The Blue Hole is a clear blue body of water with a constant 62 °F (17 °C) temperature and constant inflow of 3,000 US gallons per minute (11 m 3 /min; 2,500 imp gal/min), enough to cycle out the water every six hours. While the surface is only 80 feet (24 m) in diameter, it expands to a diameter of 130 feet (40 m) at the bottom.
e. A continental shelf is a portion of a continent that is submerged under an area of relatively shallow water, known as a shelf sea. Much of these shelves were exposed by drops in sea level during glacial periods. The shelf surrounding an island is known as an insular shelf. The continental margin, between the continental shelf and the abyssal ...
Sea surface temperature (SST), or ocean surface temperature, is the water temperature close to the ocean 's surface. The exact meaning of surface varies according to the measurement method used, but it is between 1 millimetre (0.04 in) and 20 metres (70 ft) below the sea surface. For comparison, the sea surface skin temperature relates to the ...