Kanook – Tlingit Nation

March – 2010

Approximately 100 million years ago a massive sea split the North American
Continent from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Gulf of Mexico in the south.

A seaway teaming with life, not as you and I know today but life forms that when
they passed into the ages, laid down the fossil fuel base we are just beginning to
tap, some extractions quick and profitable such as in the Texas and Oklahoma, while
others are proving to be expensive and the process harmful to the environment.
The Western Interior Seaway (Cretaceous Seaway) as you can see in the above map
was a massive waterway that covered much of the interior of North America during
the early and mid Cretaceous epoch from 100 to 65 million years ago, and was
among the largest continental seas of all time, stretching from Utah in the west to
the western Appalachians in the east, a total of 621 miles wide, with an deepest
depths of 2,624 feet to 2,953 feet (averaging a little over ½ mile), overall it was a
relatively shallow sea. It covered most of the shallow southeastern United States,
including every state adjacent to today’s Gulf of Mexico.
It was created during the period when the Atlantic Ocean was experiencing the
spreading of its seafloor, whereas so much new rock was created that it displaced
the water increasing sea-levels worldwide for millions of years, along with the now
non-existent Farallon1 and North American Plates colliding, which caused the Rocky

1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farallon_Plate
Mountains to form in western North America2, the resultant action created a
depression or Foreland Basin in the middle of America. This depression and the
highly variable sea-levels existing during the Cretaceous allowed the waters from
the Arctic Ocean in the north and the waters from the Gulf of Mexico in the south to
meet and flood the central lowlands, forming this sea that ebbed and flowed over
the course of the Cretaceous epoch.
Before the Western Interior Seaway was the Mowry Sea, whereas during the early
Cretaceous period (145 – 135 mya), was formed as the North American plate drifted
westward forcing the eastern edge of the Pacific plate deep into the earth’s mantle.
This subduction created a chain of volcanoes from Mexico to southwestern Canada
that hurtled large quantities of ash and lava, where the ash billowed high into the
prevailing winds scattering the ash eastward. As it fell it accumulated across the
land, with generous amounts falling into the Mowry Sea that occupied much of the
central United States. Closed at its southern end it stretched northward in a narrow
body until it reached the Arctic Ocean. Because of its closed southern end it is
figured that it was a shallow calm sea, and somewhat stagnant due to the lack of
currents from being closed…thus diminishing it overall circulation. In addition to the
ash fall, it accumulated minerals that eroded from the surrounding landforms.
During the late Cretaceous the Mowry eventually joined with the Tethys Sea 3,
which complete the Western Interior Sea, from that time two continental watersheds
drained into it from the east and from the west, diluting its saline waters and adding
more resources in the manner of eroded silt that formed shifting delta systems all
along its low-lying coasts. There was little sedimentation on the eastern shores,
whereas the western coasts consist of a thick clastic wedge4 which eroded eastward
from the Sevier orogenic belt5. The western shore was thus highly variable,
depending on the variations of the sea-level, and the sediment accumulation,
whereas this sediment accumulation suggests that the Western Interior Seaway was
warm and tropical with abundant algae – computer models of late demonstrate a
counter-clockwise circulation on the Seaway, with the cooler waters from the Arctic
flowing south along the eastern seacoasts of Wyoming and Colorado.
At the end of the Cretaceous the continued uplift of a mountain-building episode
called the Laramide orogeny6, lifted the sandbanks (sandstone) and muddy brackish
lagoons (shale), the thick sequences of silt and sandstone still seen today as the
Laramie Foundation7, while low-lying basins like the Powder River Basin in Wyoming
between them gradually subsided. In time the Western Interior Seaway divided
across the Dakotas and retreated south to the Gulf of Mexico…this shrinking
regressive phase of the Western Interior Seaway is referred to by some as the Pierre
Seaway.

2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Plate
3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tethys_Sea
4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clastic_wedge
5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevier_orogeny
6
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laramide_orogeny
7
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laramie_Formation
 This sea teamed with life, albeit life that you and I
don’t see hanging around anymore, some say to our
benefit…most of these creatures’ weighted more than
two modern day locomotives, and stretch from here
to tomorrow. Albeit was a shallow sea it had
numerous predatory marine reptiles, like the
Mosasaurs (lizard in Greek) who were a serpentine
reptile – these ferocious predators are now considered
to the closest relatives of snakes due to symptomatic similarities in jaw and skull
anatomies, they were lepidosaurs, reptiles with overlapping scales. It is believed
they evolved from semi-aquatic squamates8 known as the aigialosaurs9 close
relatives of modern-day monitor lizards, in the Early Cretaceous Period. During the
last 20 million years of the Cretaceous Period (Turonian-Maastrichtian), with the
extinction of the ichthyosaurs and pliosaurs, the Mosasaurs became the dominant
marine large 60 foot reptile,
They shared the sea with the Squalicorax
(crow shark) of the extinct lamniform10 shark,
evidence points to this predator reaching 16.5
feet in length, classified as a predator he was
also a scavenger, but his main food was
turtles, mosasaurs, ichthyodectes and other
bony fishes and
sea creatures. His distant cousin also roams the
Western Interior Seaway, whereas the Ptychodus
Mortoni a giant (33 feet) shell-fish eating shark slips
through the water like a bullet making short work of
any shellfish it encounters.
And the food for the
Squalicorax consists of the
advanced bony fish like the Pachyrhizodus which bear
somewhat of a resemblance to the ever popular Salmon of the
day, these guys swim in schools as do they buddies the
Enchodus, a small fish around 2.5
inches in length modern day sardine,
or herring? The larger of the species, “bony fish” is the 16-
foot Xiphactinus, making him a
sizeable foe against the
Squalicorax.
Additional sea life included
invertebrates, like the mollusks,
ammonites and squid like belemnites and of course the
8
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squamates
9
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aigialosaur
10
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamniformes
plankton which gave the Cretaceous epoch its name, the coccolithophores 11, as they
secreted the chalky platelets, along with the foraminiferans12 and radiolarians13.
Wandering around on its shorelines you would
commonly find a Claosaurus (broken lizard), that
reached a height of 16 feet and weighted in at 1,050
lbs, he was a well known
plant eater.
There was many
Hesperornis’ swimming
around, they were a large wingless bird (feet in length)
that hunted for its subsistence in the sea, swimming about using its powerful legs.
It has lobed toes as found in today’s grebes, rather than webbed – this determined
based on their ability to rotate, webbed toes would have hindered this ability. Now I
not sure at what corner video store this ability was found, but someone way smarter
than I made a determination.
The Ichthyornis seabird was as pesky as the common seagull
is today, flying about and scavenging for its daily bread. This
two foot bird had one major difference than most birds today,
the jaws had numerous small, sharp teeth along with its large
winds and breastbone that suggests they had strong flight
ability.
During the time of the Western Interior Seaway, a few miles
away another important landform today was coming into its
own…the Bryce Canyon in Utah, where it has been determined that its make up
was determined by the ebb and flow of the levels of the sea.

The same forces that occurred during the Laramide Orogeny, which began some
70 mya and that created the Rocky Mountains were at play in the Bryce area
stretching the area into the high plateaus – this majestic force uplifting the Colorado
Plateaus and changing the course of the Colorado River and opening the Gulf of
California about 5 mya, created the hoodoos, badlands, and monoliths we find in the
Bryce Canyon National Park.

11
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coccolithophore
12
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foraminifera
13
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiolarian
 Grand Canyon (A), Chocolate Cliffs (B), Vermilion Cliffs (C), White Cliffs
(D), Zion Canyon (E),
Gray Cliffs (F), Pink Cliffs (G), Bryce Canyon (H)
The Grand Staircase

The oldest sequence of these super-sequence of rocks are exposed in the Grand
Canyon, the intermediate in Zion National Park and the youngest parts are laid bare
in the Bryce Canyon region, whereas a small amount of overlap occurs in and
around each park. Keep in mind that the formation of the “Grand Staircase” took
over 2000 million years of our Blue Marble’s history, whereas the rocks exposed in
the Bryce Canyon are about 100 million years younger than those in nearby Zion
National Park – and likewise the rock in the Zion National Park are younger than
those in the Grand Canyon.
As the shoreline of the Western Interior Seaway moved back and forth, the Bryce
region alternated from being part of the Sevier landmass to being under the
Cretaceous Seaway, creating therefore alternating layers of non-marine, inter-tidal,
and marine sediments that layer on top of each other.
Conglomerate14, siltstone15 and fossil-rich sandstone add up to approximately 300
feet, mark the arrival of the Western Interior Seaway. In addition there is found
what is known as Dakota Sandstone16, marked as the oldest formation exposed in
the Bryce Canyon region, and as mentioned is the youngest one exposed in the Zion
and Kolob canyons area to the southwest.
Found in the Dakota Sandstone are copious
amounts of petrified wood, oyster beds
containing millions of fossils and large amount of
coal. These formations can be seen in the Paria
Valley17 where you can find sand that accumulated
on beaches and lagoons, and vast coal-producing
swamps as the Western Interior Seaway advanced
and later retreated – this area sits on much older
Jurassic formations that are not exposed in the
immediate region.
As the Western Interior Seaway became deeper and calmer it deposited mud and
silt on top of the Dakota Formation which eventually produced the black Tropic

14
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conglomerate_%28geology%29
15
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siltstone
16
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_Sandstone
17
http://www.americansouthwest.net/utah/grand_staircase_escalante/paria.html
Shale that is found in parts of Utah and is up to 985 feet thick in the Paria
Amphitheater, whereas it forms the un-vegetated badlands seen in the Tropic
Valley18, known as perhaps the most fossil-rich formation in the area – containing
uncounted numerous straight-shelled and coiled ammonites.

Hoodoos in Claron Formation, Bryce Canyon

The Western Interior Seaway was already retreating east and to the south when
the Straight Cliffs Foundation was
deposited, whereas it layers represent
various stages of the retreat…The cliff-
forming sandstone of the “Tibbet
Canyon Member” was deposited on
top of the “Tropic Shale” in a shallow
marine and later near shore
environments – and then shale and
sandstone from the “Smokey Hollow
Member” were deposited on top of its
basal layer of coal-rich mudstone in
coastal swamps and lagoons on the
shore of the Seaway. While the alternating layers of shale and sandstone mixed
with massive “coal deposits” of the “John Henry Member” were laid down in the
swamps, lagoons and rivers and streams and their associated deposits
environments as one member. The formation eventually erodes into almost un-
climbable cliffs and escarpments of “whitish to yellow-gray” sandstones that are
relatively thin inter-bedded with layers of shale and mudstone, numerous shark
teeth have been found in the lower parts of the formation.
Lakes and east-flowing rivers became common as the Seaway retreated,
themselves a dominant settling place for sediment following its retreat. Such as the
flow that created the Wahweap Foundation found in southern Utah and northern
Arizona in and around the Lake Powell area, whereas dinosaur fossils have been

18
http://www.brycecanyoncountry.com/tropic.html
located amongst other types of fossils. The Wahweap is part of the Grey Cliffs of
the Grand Staircase, dinosaur remains include some of the Hadrosauroideas’.

Family tree of the Hadrosauroidea.

Representative genera of each tribe are shown to scale
As the retreat continued a flood plain crossed by rivers and lakes developed in the
Bryce Canyon, where mud and sand accumulated in this to become gray sandstone
and mudstones of the Kaiparowits Formation, located in the Kaiparowits Plateau.
 The Kaiparowits Plateau (green area in center), as seen from space
This formation is up to 100 feet thick in the Bryce Canyon region, while other parts
of the Kaiparowits are in the range of several hundreds of feet, there are two
formations, the Canaan Peak and the Pine Hollow that sit on top of the Kaiparowits
elsewhere in the region but are absent in
the Bryce Canyon region. These two
areas (Canaan Peak/Pine Hollow) in their
collection of sandstones and
conglomerates record the stream and
river deposits starting in the Paleocene
epoch. The Kaiparowits Plateau is a large
elevated landform located in southern
Utah – along with the Grand Staircase and
the Canyons of the Escalante it makes up
a “significant” portion of the Grand
Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
Its extension to the southeast, “Fiftymile
Mountain”, continues nearly to the
Colorado River and Lake Powell. This
massive mountain is a prominent part of the northern skyline from the Glen Canyon
National Recreation Area.
During the late part of the Cretaceous epoch, the Kaiparowits Plateau was located
near the western shoreline of the Western Interior Sea. The interior of the plateau
was peat swamps, while what is now the “Straight Cliffs” were at the shoreline, and
further to the west were the “Sevier Highlands”. Erosion from the Highlands
deposited around 1500 feet of what is now the “Straight Cliffs Formation”.
Remnants in the interior are now seen as beds of coal, whereas later deposits in the
Cretaceous formed higher sandstone layers, known as the Wahweap and
Kaiparowits Formations.
Found in eastern Wyoming was another large
dinosaur, its length at over 30 feet named the
Nedoceratops, a plant eating fellow – this species
thrived in North America and Asia during the
Cretaceous epoch, all are known to have ceased their
existence after the K-T extinction event.
Between 68 mya and 65 mya you would have found
roaming around in Wyoming the most famous of all
dinosaurs, the infamous Tyrannosaurus Rex, or the T-
rex, that lived exclusively in Western North America
and had an extremely wide range in its
searching for subsistence. It has the
distinction of being the last non-avian
dinosaur to exist prior to the K-T extinction
event 65 million years age. The T-rex was
the largest known tyrannosaurid and the
largest know land predator measuring
some 42 feet in length, 13 feet tall, at the
hips and weighting 7.5 tons, it is believed
he may have preyed on hadrosaurs and
ceratopsians, while some scholars believe he was a scavenger.
And although more commonly identified with Europe and the British Islands there
have been some types of Plesiosaurs’ found in the Western Interior Seaway
footprint, this was a marine carnivore
classified as a reptile and they are said to
resemble a “snake threaded through the
shell of a turtle”, albeit they had no shell.
From the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of
Mexico this ancient sea contained
numerous species of life, and its ancient
seabeds left a record of all this and the
flora
and fauna that was in its life. Some 65.5
million years ago a large piece of rock slammed
into the Yucatan Peninsula near today the
village of Chicxulub and the beginning of the
end happened to the non-avian dinosaurs of
the world. I imagine on that day, the
earthbound beasts of the land in that Western
Interior Sea looked south and watched a massive fire ball mushroom high into the
atmosphere, later to be followed by high velocity blast of air and still later a wall of
water reaching high above their heads washing over them. The end had come to
the Cretaceous epoch.