The Middle Cretaceous. This was a land epoch. The early Cretaceous sea retired from Texas and Mexico, for its sediments are overlain unconformably by formations of the Upper Cretaceous. So long was the time gap between the two series that no species found in the one occurs in the other.
The Upper Cretaceous. There now began one of the most remarkable events in all geological history,—the great Cretaceous subsidence. Its earlier warpings were recorded in continental deposits,—wide sheets of sandstone, shale, and some coal,—which were spread from Texas to British Columbia. These continental deposits are overlain by a succession of marine formations whose vast area is shown on the map, [Figure 260]. We may infer that as the depression of the continent continued the sea came in far and wide over the coast lands and the plains worn low during the previous epochs. Upper Cretaceous formations show that south of New England the waters of the Atlantic somewhat overlapped the crystalline rocks of the Piedmont Belt and spread their waste over the submerged coastal plain. The Gulf of Mexico again covered the Mississippi embayment, reaching as far north as southern Illinois, and extended over Texas. A mediterranean sea now stretched from the Gulf to the arctic regions and from central Iowa to the eastern shore of the Great Basin land at about the longitude of Salt Lake City, the Colorado Mountains rising from it in a chain of islands. Along with minor oscillations there were laid in the interior sea various formations of sandstones, shales, and limestones, and from Kansas to South Dakota beds of white chalk show that the clear, warm waters swarmed at times with foraminiferal life whose disintegrating microscopic shells accumulated in this rare deposit.
Fig. 316. Hypothetical Map of Upper Cretaceous Epicontinental Seas
Shaded areas, probable seas; broken lines, approximate shore lines
Fig. 317. Foraminifera from Cretaceous Chalk, Iowa
At this epoch a wide sea, interrupted by various islands, stretched across Eurasia from Wales and western Spain to China, and spread southward over much of the Sahara. To the west its waters were clear and on its floor the crumbled remains of foraminifers gathered in heavy accumulations of calcareous ooze,— the white chalk of France and England. Sea urchins were also abundant, and sponges contributed their spicules to form nodules of flint.