![]() GENERAL How to be a Good Guest Where is Bat Cave? The AREA Area rock Layers Topography Geomorphology Geological History The Paleozoic The Mesozoic The Cenozoic Water The Hydrologic Cycle Solution Solution chemistry Karst Landscapes Erosional Features Depositional Features Environmental Issues BAT CAVE How was Bat Cave formed? Surface Plan of the site Map of the Cave Life in and around Bat Cave A Virtual Trip Through Bat Cave TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE |
![]() 545-245 MY (=Million Years) Ago In Geology we now understand that the earth's outer layer, the lithosphere, is made of enormous slabs of rock some 60 miles thick that float on the layer beneath it, the asthenosphere. Those lithospheric slabs called plates, move, collide and separate, carrying their embedded continents with them. So, the history of Florida is also part of the history of plate movement. The specifics of the earliest history of Florida are lost in the mist of time. The oldest rocks that give us a record of the events of the earliest Earth are buried so deeply that they are just about inaccessible. We do know however that Florida's origin lies with that of the southern continents, more likely Africa. Florida fossils recovered from the Early Paleozoic (Ordovician Period to Devonian Period) rocks of Florida indicate that life here was closely related to life in rocks of the same age in South America, Africa and Eurasia, but NOT those of the US continent. In those days, Florida was part of a supercontinent we call Gondwanaland, that itself was formed by the earlier welding together of the southern continents, and not part of the northern group of continents called Laurasia.
245-66.4 MY Ago 245-208 MY Ago Throughout Triassic time, the Gulf Coastal area, including Florida, is land. In Late Triassic, the supercontinent Pangea begins to crack, break up and rift apart. Great grabens form, places where the lithosphere is foundering as this supercontinent rips apart. Late Triassic rocks mostly consist of sediments washing into those grabens from the bordering continents. The Jurassic Period
This carbonate deposition ends before the end of the Cretaceous and
there is about a 10 million year gap in the depositional record till deposition
resumes in the Middle Paleocene. So, unfortunately, the Florida record
is silent on the great extinction at the end of the Cretaceous and its
causes.
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