TABULAR SUMMARY 



629 



Tabular Summary of Some of the important Events in the geologic 

 History of the West Indies and Central America 



Epoch 



Events 



Recent. 



Submergence of land areas, probably resulting 

 from deglaciation, except local differential 

 crustal movements, in places producing uplift. 



Pleistocene . 



Emergence of large areas, probably due to with- 

 drawal of water to form the continental ice- 

 sheets; also oscillation of land areas by differ- 

 ential crustal movement. 



Pliocene. 



Local moderate submergence, period of cataclys- 

 mic faulting breaking up a large land area and 

 forming the Antilles nearly as they are at pres- 

 ent. Probably a narrow interoceanic connec- 

 tion that admitted an Atlantic fauna into the 

 present site of the Gulf of California. 



" Upper. 



Miocene . , ..< 



Middle. 



Lower. 



Extensive emergence of the land joining North 

 and South America through Central America; 

 Greater Antilles joined to each other, and possi- 

 bly to Central America, by bridges from Jamaica 

 to Honduras and from western Cuba to Yuca- 

 tan, and to South America along the Caribbean 

 arc. All these supposed connections not neces- 

 sarily contemporaneous. 



Extensive marginal submergence in some of the 

 West Indies and on the Atlantic side of Central 

 America. No known interoceanic connections. 



Extensive submergence in the West Indies and 

 around the continental margins ; narrow, areally 

 limited interoceanic conhections; land emerging 

 in Central America. 



Oligocene. . . ^ 



Upper Extensive submergence with interoceanic connec- 

 tions. 



Middle Maximum areal submergence with extensive inter- 

 oceanic connections. 



^^ower Extensive submergence in Central America and 



the southeastern United States ; local emergence 

 in the West Indies. 

 Extensive diastn)i>hisni and mountain-making by 

 folding. 



