TexasBred said:
I live on a limestone bed that is apparently hundreds of feet thick and every layer full of fossils. Sounds like a few years ago I was under a deep blue sea.
Hard to get your mind around that isn't it...that there could be so much water 'over us' that our area was once at the bottom of the sea?
It was, as was most of the central pat of North America. The Western Interior Seaway. Connected what is now Gulf of Mexico with the Arctic Ocean. Where did the water go? It went into the low lying areas of the world. There is a finite amount of solid mass on/in the planet, and as one part uplifts, another has to subside. Today, for us surface dwellers, it's convenient to describe elevation in terms of "above sea level" but for geological epochs, ages and periods, it really is more correct to view any point on the planet as viewed from the center of the Earth.
Yes, your area (and mine) was once underwater, but as the NA uplift took place, mountains were pushed up from what was then the bottom of the sea, and so was our areas. As our 'distance from the Earth's center" increased due to plate movement, other regions' distance from the same point decreased, and that's "where the water went". This happened I believe about 200 million years ago...
A more ancient uplift took place in relation to the Permian Basin and pushed up the Guadalupe Mtn range, which includes the highest point in Texas, but because that range was once under water, you can find fossilized sea shells right below the surface of Guadalupe Peak. It's estimated the basin (Delaware basin) was covered in 2 miles of water.
These forces are still going on today, and it's entirely possible, that some time in the very very very distant future, parts of the current seabed will uplift somewhere, and present day Texas will again subside & drop below the waves.
