9781422285589

13 Chapter One: Formation and Location

largest ocean, covering more than a third of Earth’s surface, with an area of more than 60 million square miles (156 million square kilometers). The ocean also contains the deepest point on the planet, the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench. The story of North America, its coastline, and its oceans began more than 200 million years ago, when Earth had only one continent, called Pangaea, and one ocean, called Panthalassa. Pangaea was made up of several landmasses that eventually separated as Earth’s tectonic plates rolled across the crust. As these plates drifted further apart, the continents and the oceans that are so familiar to us today formed. Bays and Gulfs Geologically speaking, North America is always on the go, shifting one way, moving another. Occasionally, its landscape is bombarded with comets and asteroids, scarring the land forever. Such was the case about 35 million years ago, when a large comet-like object crashed into what is today the Delmarva Peninsula, near Cape Charles, Virginia. The collision created a crater the size of Rhode Island. The impact, coupled with the carving ability of retreating glaciers some 18,000 years ago, formed Chesapeake

A few of the many shrimp boats that work the Gulf of Mexico.