13 articles
Ancylus Lake
Ancylus Lake was a freshwater lake stage in the postglacial Baltic Sea basin, following the Yoldia Sea and preceding the Littorina Sea, lasting roughly from 8800 to 6700 BC.
Baltic Ice Lake
Baltic Ice Lake, a large ice-dammed freshwater lake filling the Baltic basin during the last deglaciation, drained catastrophically about 25 m through central Sweden before the Yoldia Sea formed.
Cache Creek Ocean
Cache Creek Ocean: ancient Panthalassa ocean basin preserved as the exotic Cache Creek terrane of British Columbia and Yukon, with Tethyan Permian fusuline fossils, blueschist, and Jurassic closure during Intermontane terrane amalgamation.
Central American Seaway
Central American Seaway: Neogene Atlantic–Pacific marine passage (~200 km wide) across the Panama Arc region, closing in stages from ~12–9 Ma (deep) to ~2.76 Ma (surface), forming the Isthmus of Panama.
Champlain Sea
Champlain Sea (mer de Champlain): cold, brackish postglacial arm of the Atlantic flooding the St. Lawrence Lowlands and Ottawa Valley about 14,000–10,500 cal yr BP, source of sensitive Leda clay, distinct from the Goldthwait Sea east of Quebec City.
Iapetus Ocean
Iapetus Ocean, the proto-Atlantic paleo-ocean proposed by J. Tuzo Wilson in 1966, opened between Laurentia, Baltica, and Avalonia in the late Neoproterozoic and closed in the Silurian, forming the Caledonian–Appalachian orogen and the Iapetus suture.
Mongol-Okhotsk Ocean
The Mongol-Okhotsk Ocean was a paleo-ocean basin between the Siberian Craton and the North China-Amuria block that closed scissor-like from west to east during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic.
Panthalassa
Panthalassa, meaning "all water," was a vast global ocean surrounding Pangaea from the late Paleozoic into the early Mesozoic, with the Pacific Ocean as its modern remnant.
Paratethys
Paratethys was a vast shallow epicontinental sea that covered Eurasia's southern margin from about 33 million years ago into the Pliocene, leaving the Black, Caspian, and Aral seas.
Rheic Ocean
The Rheic Ocean was a Paleozoic ocean basin between Gondwana and Laurussia, opened about 490 Ma when Avalonia rifted from Gondwana, and closed in the Devonian–Carboniferous, producing the Variscan and Alleghanian orogenies and helping assemble Pangaea.
Tethys Ocean
Tethys Ocean (Téthys): ancient ocean between Gondwana and Laurasia, conceived by Suess; successive Paleo-, Meso-, and Neo-Tethys basins, once ~12,000 km wide, closed by the India-Eurasia collision, leaving the Mediterranean and Caspian as remnants.
Western Interior Seaway
Western Interior Seaway, also called the Cretaceous Seaway or Niobraran Sea: a shallow epeiric sea splitting North America into Laramidia and Appalachia from Jurassic to Paleocene, from Gulf of Mexico to Arctic, leaving coal, oil, and chalk deposits.
Yoldia Sea
Yoldia Sea: brackish Baltic Sea stage, 11.7–10.7 ka BP, between the Baltic Ice Lake and Ancylus Lake, connected to the ocean via the Närke Strait in central Sweden.