Physiography of the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea

Abstract

The Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea have attracted the attention of many geological investigators because of their topographic complexity. Early students suggested that both regions were sites of landmasses that had subsided to their present depths or been oceanized. Others have treated both areas as permanent oceanic basins with one (Gulf of Mexico) being surrounded by landmasses and the other (Caribbean) by island arcs and geosynclines (Paine and Meyerhoff, 1970; Meyerhoff and Meyerhoff, 1972). Recent investigators have attempted to explain their complex tectonics and stratigraphy, particularly the Caribbean, in the light of global tectonics. Proponents of sea-floor spreading have suggested that the Caribbean is a remnant of pre-Mesozoic sea floor trapped between the westerly drifting American continents and later sealed from the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans by subduction zones (Deuser, 1970; Edgar et al., 1971; Malfait and Dinkelman, 1972). Other mobilists have interpreted the Caribbean as a young ocean basin formed during separation of the American continents (Funnell and Smith, 1968; Ball and Harrison, 1969, 1970; JOIDES, 1971). The present report attempts to describe the physiography of both areas in the light of seismic reflection data collected by numerous investigators during the past decade, data from the Deep-Sea Drilling Project, and a new detailed bathymetric chart of the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean. These new data greatly expand the fund of critical knowledge and have resulted in new insights into the origin and evolution of the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean.