Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- In geology, resting upon a continent: said of shallow seas formed by the submergence of continental areas in certain geological periods.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Located on a
continental shelf
Etymologies
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Examples
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It is clear from both the fossil record and the ecology of oceans and epicontinental shallow water today that continental shelves were and are necessary for multicellularity.
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The development of continents meant the development of shallow epicontinental “seas”, on which stromatolites (pillow-shaped microbial mats composed of layers of specialized bacteria) could anchor and evolve.
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The geological evidence that Lomonosov Ridge is part of the Russian continental shelf is not an easy question We can say that this is not just a ridge, but part of a whole system from Russia to Greenland and Canada The Arctic is a shallow epicontinental sea on a continental base.
The Arctic Oil Rush Shoumatoff, Alex 2008
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Origin of whales in epicontinental remnant seas: new evidence from the Early Eocene of Pakistan.
Archive 2006-02-01 Darren Naish 2006
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The sections are arranged along a depth transect ~50–600 m across an epicontinental basin covering Egypt and Israel.
Bürger and Cubasch: Are multiproxy climate reconstructions robust? « Climate Audit 2005
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During the late Paleocene thermal maximum, the upwelling of low-oxygen intermediate Tethyan water into the epicontinental basin led to enhanced biological productivity and anoxia at the seafloor.
Bürger and Cubasch: Are multiproxy climate reconstructions robust? « Climate Audit 2005
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We need not regard this epicontinental sea as deep.
The Elements of Geology William Harmon Norton 1900
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In the interior the Mississippian is composed chiefly of limestones, with some shales, which tell of a clear, warm, epicontinental sea swarming with crinoids, corals, and shells, and occasionally clouded with silt from the land.
The Elements of Geology William Harmon Norton 1900
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We can hardly account for this except by a shallow-water connection between the two ancient epicontinental seas.
The Elements of Geology William Harmon Norton 1900
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The epicontinental sea was shoaled and narrowed, and muds were washed in from the adjacent lands.
The Elements of Geology William Harmon Norton 1900
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