<p>Anyone who has studied ice ages would know that during the last two-and-a-half million years of Earth's history, there have been periods where there was enough ice to suck up a lot of water. As a result, sea levels fell by an average of 100 meters. Among the most famous examples of this sort of drop is Beringia, the landmass that connected North America to Asia.</p>

<p>However, that doesn't seem to be the only way to reduce sea levels.  On the image below is how much North America changed in only less than ten million years.</p>

<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/Gi2UP.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/Gi2UP.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>

<p>On the left is what North America looked like 75 million years ago.  On the right is North America at the time the dinosaur empire fell nine million years later.  It's not just North America that experienced this drop.  As a matter of fact, the whole world was undergoing the same process (it's just that I couldn't find one compatible enough to post in this SE.)</p>

<p>The big deal with that is that unlike in the Ordovician, Carboniferous, Permian or Quaternary periods, this marine regression was not because of ice, as its extent (therefore its influence) was barely minimal--<strong><em>alpine</em></strong> at the very best.  There was no massive pileup of polar ice as was the case in the other periods listed last sentence.</p>

<p><strong>So if ice weren't the cause of the sea levels dropping during the latest Cretaceous age, then what else could cause the same thing to happen?</strong></p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-02-11T15:26:01.383Z
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maastrichtian for more details
trond hansen
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-02-11T16:08:59.273Z
@trondhansen  It focused on the biology.
JohnWDailey
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-02-12T13:29:15.610Z
Why did you rolled back my edit? Maastrichtian is *not* an epoch, it's an age...
Jean-Marie Prival
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-02-12T23:51:17.257Z
@Jean-MariePrival  It's less confusing that way.  On top of that, titles need to be capitalized.
JohnWDailey
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-02-13T08:39:12.227Z
@JohnWDailey Titles do not need to be capitalised, they're not really titles but rather questions. See https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/98066/capitalizing-titles and (almost) all other questions on this site and the wider network.
gerrit
<earth-history><sea-level><paleogeography><cretaceous>
What Caused The Sea Levels to Drop During the Maastrichtian Epoch?
JohnWDailey
# What Caused The Sea Levels to Drop During the Maastrichtian Epoch?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2020-02-11)

Anyone who has studied ice ages would know that during the last two-and-a-half million years of Earth's history, there have been periods where there was enough ice to suck up a lot of water. As a result, sea levels fell by an average of 100 meters. Among the most famous examples of this sort of drop is Beringia, the landmass that connected North America to Asia.

However, that doesn't seem to be the only way to reduce sea levels. On the image below is how much North America changed in only less than ten million years.

[![enter image description here](https://i.sstatic.net/Gi2UP.png)](https://i.sstatic.net/Gi2UP.png)

On the left is what North America looked like 75 million years ago. On the right is North America at the time the dinosaur empire fell nine million years later. It's not just North America that experienced this drop. As a matter of fact, the whole world was undergoing the same process (it's just that I couldn't find one compatible enough to post in this SE.)

The big deal with that is that unlike in the Ordovician, Carboniferous, Permian or Quaternary periods, this marine regression was not because of ice, as its extent (therefore its influence) was barely minimal--***alpine*** at the very best. There was no massive pileup of polar ice as was the case in the other periods listed last sentence.

**So if ice weren't the cause of the sea levels dropping during the latest Cretaceous age, then what else could cause the same thing to happen?**

**Tags:** earth-history, sea-level, paleogeography, cretaceous

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maastrichtian for more details  
> **username_0**: @username_1  It focused on the biology.  
> **username_2**: Why did you rolled back my edit? Maastrichtian is *not* an epoch, it's an age...  
> **username_0**: @username_2  It's less confusing that way.  On top of that, titles need to be capitalized.  
> **username_3**: @username_0 Titles do not need to be capitalised, they're not really titles but rather questions. See https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/98066/capitalizing-titles and (almost) all other questions on this site and the wider network.  

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## 0 answers

