Biogeographical and geological evidence for a smaller, completely‐enclosed Pacific Basin in the Late Cretaceous

Abstract

Over the last few decades many biogeographical researchers have contended that hundreds of trans-Pacific disjunctions of poor dispersing taxa are more simply explained by removing the plate tectonic assumption of separation by a now-vanished, pre-ABSTRACT Aim To use biogeographical, palaeomagnetic, palaeosedimentary, and plate circuit data from Late Cretaceous regions in and around the Pacific to test the plate tectonic hypothesis of a pre-Pacific superocean.Location East Asia, Australia, Antarctica, the western Americas, and the Pacific.Methods Literature surveys of the distributions of Cretaceous, circum-Pacific taxa were compared with palaeomagnetic and palaeosedimentary data. Uncontroversial plate motions based on seafloor spreading data were also used to test the results of the biogeographical and palaeomagnetic analyses.

Mesozoic dinosaurs from Brazil and their biogeographic implications

“…4b-c) cannot be explained only by cladogenesis associated with the splitting of Pangaea. For some authors (e.g., Bonaparte 1984, Sullivan andLucas 2000), the Maastrichtian record of the titanosaur Alamosaurus in North America (Montellano-Ballesteros 2003, Upchurch et al 2004) is congruent with a land connection with South America in the Late Cretaceous (Simpson 1950(Simpson , 1978, which would also be responsible for the presence of hadrosaurids and ankylosaurs in southern latitudes (Bonaparte et al 1984, McCarthy 2005, Coria and Cambiaso 2007.…”

Filogenia de Leiinae (Diptera, Mycetophilidae) com uma nova proposta de classificação para a subfamília

“…The opening of the southern Atlantic Ocean, breaking up Gondwana, began in early Cretaceous, 145 mya (Raven & Axelrod 1974), while New Zealand, Australia and South America were connected until Late Cretaceous, 70 mya (McCarthy 2003(McCarthy , 2005. The final disruption between Australia and South America occurred only in the second half of the Cenozoic, about 35 mya (McLoughlin 2001), meaning that there has been a lasting connection between Australia and South America with Antarctica since the Cretaceous to the mid Cenozoic.…”

Inshore Fishes of Howland Island, Baker Island, Jarvis Island, Palmyra Atoll, and Kingman Reef

“…argued that the best evidence suggests that the five U.S. Line and Phoenix Islands formed in the second, primarily Paleocene, period of 73-68 ma. This projection relies on plate tectonic theory of Pacific Ocean development, rejecting the expanding earth hypothesis advocated by some biogeographers (e. g., McCarthy, 2005), and also relies on the hot-spot hypothesis of Hawaiian Island and Emperor Seamount origins (e. g., Kroenke, 1997: Pilger, 2007) rather than the alternate hypothesis of shallow-source volcanism from latitudinally progressive fracturing during lithospheric extension (e. g., Smith, 2007).…”

“…Plate tectonic theory indicates that, since the Jurassic Age, the Pacific Basin has contracted as the Atlantic Ocean opened, and that the Pacific Plate has been expanding (e. g., Springer, 1982;Pilger, 2007;Smith, 2007). Expanding earth theory suggests that both the basin and plate have been expanding, but that plate expansion is of a different nature than in plate tectonic theory (e. g., McCarthy, 2003McCarthy, , 2005.…”

“…The major theory presented in opposition to plate tectonics is of an expanding earth (e. g., McCarthy, 2003McCarthy, , 2005, which itself has alternate formulations (e. g., Shields, 1991Shields, , 1996Shields, , 1997Owen, 1990;Patterson and Owen, 1991). There are also alternate theories than mantle plume hot spots for oceanic island formation, even for the archetypal Hawaiian Islands; for example, Smith (2007) argued that progressive lithospheric extension and fracturing better explains the formation of the Hawaiian Islands than a mantle-plume hot-spot hypothesis (see also Koppers and Staudigel, 2005).…”