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The Cretaceous Period (145–66 Ma), overall, had a relatively warm climate which resulted in high eustatic sea levels and created numerous shallow inland seas. In the Late Cretaceous, the climate was much warmer than present; however, throughout most of the period, a cooling trend is apparent.
The impact's injection of water vapour into the atmosphere also produced major climatic perturbations. [248] The end-Cretaceous event is the only mass extinction definitively known to be associated with an impact, and other large extraterrestrial impacts, such as the Manicouagan Reservoir impact, do not coincide with any noticeable extinction ...
Smith and others concluded that the Late Cretaceous drop in sea levels constituted the most severe marine regression of the entire Mesozoic Era. [102] D'Hondt and others argued that an asteroid impact at the end of the Cretaceous would not have produced enough acid for acid rain to be a significant factor contributing to the mass extinction. [56]
Sea levels reached their highest level in all of geologic history during the Cretaceous, although they declined before the period ended. [77] Scleractinian corals were more diverse during the Cretaceous than they are today. Back then coral reefs formed along the Gulf coast. [78] Rudist bivalves also constructed reefs in the Gulf coast region. [79]
The Cenomanian-Turonian interval represents one of the hottest intervals of the entire Phanerozoic eon, [28] and it boasted the highest carbon dioxide concentrations of the Cretaceous period. [29] Even before OAE2, during the late Cenomanian, tropical sea surface temperatures (SSTs) were very warm, about 27-29 °C. [30]
The ancient sea, which existed from the early Late Cretaceous (100 Ma) to the earliest Paleocene (66 Ma), connected the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean. The two land masses it created were Laramidia to the west and Appalachia to the east. At its largest extent, it was 2,500 feet (760 m) deep, 600 miles (970 km) wide and over 2,000 miles ...
Sea-level falls: 12, of which seven were associated with significant extinctions. [f] Asteroid impacts: one large impact is associated with a mass extinction, that is, the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event; there have been many smaller impacts but they are not associated with significant extinctions, [105] or
The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after creta, the Latin word for the white limestone known as chalk.