Sundance Sea

The Sundance Sea was an epeiric sea which existed in North America during the mid to late Jurassic Period of the Mesozoic Era.cite web
last = Fanning
first = Suzette
title = Stratigraphy of the Sundance Formation
url = http://www.usd.edu/~skfannin/sundance.htm
accessdate = 2007-02-06] It was an arm of what is now the Arctic Ocean, and extended through what is now western Canada into the central western United States. The sea receded when highlands to the west began to rise.

tratigraphy

The Sundance Sea did not occur at a single time; geological evidence suggests that the Sea was actually a series of five successive marine transgressions--each separated by an erosional hiatus--which advanced and receded from the middle Jurassic onward. The terrestrial sediments of the Morrison Formation--eroded from rising highlands to the west--were deposited on top of the marine Sundance sediments as the sea regressed for the last time late in the Jurassic. [cite web
last = Kuehn
first = Steve
title = Geology of the Mesozoic Era: 245 to 66 million years ago
publisher = Department of Physics, Physical Sciences, and Geology at California State University, Stanislaus
format = PDF
url = http://geology.csustan.edu/kuehn/Geol2200/Mesozoic2_4.pdf
accessdate = 2007-02-06] cite web
title = Mesozoic Stratigraphy in the Thermopolis Area
publisher = Big Horn Basin Foundation
url = http://server1.thermopwy.net/bhbf/messtrat.html
accessdate = 2007-02-06]

The sedimentary rocks which formed in and around the Sundance Sea are often rich in fossils.

Fauna

The Sundance sea was rich in many types of life. In addition to fish, belemnites and to an extenct ammonites swarmed in shoals. Baptanodon, a large icthyosaur, swam in the seas using its large, long jaws to catch squid. Pantosaurus, a cryptocleid plesiosaur the size of a seal, went after the easier to catch fish. The largest marine reptile in the Sundance Sea was Megalneusaurus, a large pliosaur similar to Liopleurodon. Its fossils have been found in Alaska and Wyoming, which were both covered by the Sundance sea when it was alive.

ee also

* Turgai Sea

References

External links

* [http://www.palaeos.com/Mesozoic/Jurassic/MidJura.html#Geography Map of North America in the middle Jurassic, with the location of the Sundance Sea]
* [http://discovermagazine.com/1993/sep/jurassicseamonst263]
* [http://www.alaskamuseum.org/education/dinosaurs/megamouth.html]