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Areas of Cenozoic North America that were covered by seawater tended to be areas near the modern coasts. [135] The Cannonball Sea near Minot, North Dakota was the last of the North American interior. [136] Cenozoic marine invertebrates are best known from deposits near the coasts and tend to resemble modern forms.
The geology of North America is a subject of regional geology and covers the North American continent, the third-largest in the world. Geologic units and processes are investigated on a large scale to reach a synthesized picture of the geological development of the continent.
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, or the Western Interior Sea) was a large inland sea that split the continent of North America into two landmasses for 34 million years.
Map of North America During the Late Cretaceous. During the Cretaceous, the present North American continent was isolated from the other continents. In the Jurassic, the North Atlantic already opened, leaving a proto-ocean between Europe and North America. From north to south across the continent, the Western Interior Seaway started
Laurentia basement rocks. Laurentia or the North American Craton is a large continental craton that forms the ancient geological core of North America.Many times in its past, Laurentia has been a separate continent, as it is now in the form of North America, although originally it also included the cratonic areas of Greenland and the Hebridean terrane in northwest Scotland.
The terminology of the Americas is complex, but "Anglo-America" can describe Canada and the U.S., while "Latin America" comprises Mexico and the countries of Central America and the Caribbean, as well as the entire continent of South America. Natural features of North America include the northern portion of the American Cordillera, represented ...
South America became linked to North America through the Isthmus of Panama during the Pliocene, bringing a nearly complete end to South America's distinctive marsupial faunas. The formation of the Isthmus had major consequences on global temperatures, since warm equatorial ocean currents were cut off and an Atlantic cooling cycle began, with ...
c. 3 Ma – Isthmus of Panama joins North and South America. Great American Interchange. Cats, condors, raccoons and camelids move south; armadillos, hummingbirds, and opossums move north. c. 2.7 Ma – Paranthropus evolves. c. 2.6 Ma – The current ice age begins.