Caribbean Sea


Caribbean Sea, of the western Atlantic Ocean, lying between latitudes  on 9° and 22° N and longitudes 89° and 60° W. It is approximately 2,753,000 square km in extent. To the south it is bounded with the coasts of Venezuela, Colombia, and Panama on west by Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, and the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico to the north by the Greater Antilles islands  including on  Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico east by the north-south chain of the Lesser Antilles, consisting of the island arc that extends from the Virgin Islands in the northeast to Trinidad, off the Venezuelan coast, in the southeast. Within the boundaries of the Caribbean , Jamaica, south of Cuba, is the largest number of islands.

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Together with the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea has been erroneously termed the American Mediterranean, owing to the fact that like the Mediterranean Sea. it is located between two continental landmasses. In neither hydrology nor climate, however, does the Caribbean resemble the Mediterranean. The preferred oceanographic term for the Caribbean is the Antillean-Caribbean Sea that together with the Gulf of Mexico, forms the Central American Sea.

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Geology

The geologic  era of  Caribbean is not known  certainty. As part of the Central American Sea, it is presumed to have been connected with the Mediterranean during Paleozoic times and then gradually to have separated from the Atlantic Ocean was formed. The ancient sediments the seafloor of the Caribbean as well as of the Gulf of Mexico in thickness, with the upper strata representing sediments from the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras   . Three phases of sedimentation have been identified. During the first and second phases, the basin was free  deformation. The Central American Sea apparently became separated from the Atlantic before the first phase first pases ending. Near the end of the second phase, gentle warping and faulting occurred, forming the Aves and Beata ridges. Forces producing the Panamanian isthmus and the Antillean arc were vertical, resulting in no ultimate horizontal movement. The sediment beds tend to arch in the middle of the basins and to dip as landmasses are approached.


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The younger Cenozoic beds (formed during the last 65 million years) are generally horizontal, having been laid down after the deformations occurred. Connections were established with the Pacific Ocean during the Cretaceous Period but were broken the land bridges that permitted mammals to cross between North and South America were formed in the Miocene and