What the USA was like 80 million years ago

Regular readers know that I have an extensive background in earth geology, the evolution of plants and animals, and the structure of the universe. One of my hobbies is fossil hunting, and I love to read and "reminisce" about ancient rock formations, landscapes, plants and animals on earth.

Here's a very well written article in Wikipedia. Look at the very cool map of what the USA looked like:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:US_cretaceous_general.jpg

snip (text to explain map at link)

Eighty million years ago, during the Age of Dinosaurs, the geography of North America was very different from that of today.

Mountain ranges have changed considerably since this, the Cretaceous Period.

The Appalachian Mountains were probably lower and less conspicuous as a source of sediment than they are today; apparently they supplied appreciable amounts of coarse sediment only in the Southeast (Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia).

The Rocky Mountains, as they are today, did not exist; instead a giant trough in which marine sediment slowly accumulated occupied this part of the West.

Shallow, warm inland seas covered large portions of the Southern and Western United States, as shown on the map.

Large portions of California were under water, and in eastern California, Nevada, Arizona, Idaho, eastern Oregon, Washington, and Alberta, a belt of the Earth's crust slowly rose to form a new mountain range.

Details from this vast highland extended eastward into Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico.

Still farther east, Kansas, Nebraska, and adjacent States to the north and south were covered by warm, extensive, but shallow seas in which beds of limestone slowly formed.

The Cretaceous Period marked the last extensive covering of the North American continent by the sea. Since then, sea level has dropped and the continent has gradually emerged to its present size and shape.

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Sooooooo....

the mountains that we know and love "today" didn't exist at all back then :-)

Check out the map.... gosh, so much of the USA was under water! And those few mountain ranges that existed were just beginning to slowly push their ways up from the earth's crust.

Science is so fascinating. I love science!