NEGATIVE CONTINENTAL ELEMENTS 45Ev 



applied "Californian sea" to the area of Paleozoic deposits in California 

 and "of western British Columbia." In the present work the latter area 

 is referred to the Vancouverian sea. 



Caribbean mediterranean. — See Mexico-Caribbean mediterranean. 



Champlain trough. — See Saint Lawrence sea. 



Cliazy channel. — See Saint Lawrence sea. 



Coloradoan sea. — The western great inland continental sea of Cretacic 

 time extending from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic ocean. Its individual 

 parts were the Mackenzie and Eocky Mountain basins, defined under Cor- 

 dilleran sea. The eastern Great Plains area, from Manitoba to Oklahoma, 

 may be called the Great Plains basin. 



Connecticut trough. — See Saint Lawrence sea. 



Cordilleran sea.— This great Paleozoic continental sea of the Eocky 

 Mountain region has been known a very long time. Its syncline was due 

 to thrusting of the Pacific mass, and its faunas were usually dominated 

 by those of this ocean. It probably came into existence long before the 

 Cambric. Dana 53 has called it the "Western Interior or that of the East- 

 ern Eocky Mountain slope." The name as used by the writer was given 

 by Walcott. 54 Willis 55 designates it the "Eocky Mountain trough," and 

 Williams 56 has included the northern end of this sea in his "Dakota chan- 

 nel," a name that will be used in connection with the Cordilleran sea. 



During its time of maximum inundation the Cordilleran sea extended 

 from the Arctic ocean to the east of Yukonia and Cascadia, and united 

 with the Pacific ocean by way of the Great Basin and southern California. 

 At times it was also connected southward with the Sonoran sea. Its 

 faunas were derived chiefly from the Pacific and less persistently from the 

 Arctic ocean, and these elements combined, or the former alone, may have 

 spread during the earliest Paleozoic as far eastward as Appalachia and 

 Taconia. After Siluric times the Cordilleran sea was never in wide open 

 communication with the Mississippian sea, but these two great conti- 

 nental basins had as a rule their own distinct faunas, derived either from 

 the Pacific or the Atlantic (including the Gulf). 



The Cordilleran sea had several distinctive parts that must be named 

 and defined for easy reference. The most persistent portion was the Great 

 Basin area, well known since the work of King (1878. See also Dana, 

 1890, page 46), which embraced eastern Nevada, northwestern Utah, 

 western Wyoming, southeastern Idaho, and the Inyo region of California. 



53 Dana : Bull. Geological Society of America, vol. 1, 1890, p. 41. 



54 Walcott : Proc. American Association for the Advancement of Science, vol. 42, 1894, 

 pp. 143, 144, with map. 



53 Willis : Bull. Geological Society of America, vol. 18, 1907, p. 399. 

 36 Williams ; American Journal of Science, vol. 3, 1897, p. 394. 



