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The Ocean Basins and Margins pp 65–88Cite as

Mesozoic and Cenozoic Sedimentation in the Pacific Ocean Basin

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Abstract

The Pacific Ocean is the largest and oldest of the ocean basins. It represents approximately half of the world’s oceanic regions and more than one-third of the total surface area of the earth. It is also the most truly “oceanic” of the oceans in that the deep trenches that surround it effectively isolate the basin from external terrigenous sediment input, except in the northeast where the trench has been filled to overflowing with sediments eroded from Alaska and the Canadian Rocky Mountains. As a result, the nature and distribution of the sediments in the Pacific Basin are largely functions of processes occurring within the basin and are relatively independent of the geology and geologic history of the surrounding regions, which are the subjects of separate chapters in this volume. McCoy (Chapter 1) has discussed the distribution of surficial sediments in the Pacific. This chapter addresses briefly the sedimentary record.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Geophysics, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, USA, 78712

    Thomas A. Davies

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  1. Thomas A. Davies
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Earth Science and Resources Institute, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina, USA

    Alan E. M. Nairn

  2. College of Geosciences, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, USA

    Francis G. Stehli

  3. Earthquake Research Institute, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Seiya Uyeda

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© 1985 Plenum Press, New York

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Davies, T.A. (1985). Mesozoic and Cenozoic Sedimentation in the Pacific Ocean Basin. In: Nairn, A.E.M., Stehli, F.G., Uyeda, S. (eds) The Ocean Basins and Margins. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2351-8_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2351-8_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4612-9440-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4613-2351-8

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