The Cretaceous World: Chapter Objectives

After completing this chapter, students should:

1. Be able to describe pelagic life of the Cretaceous Period.
2. Know the groups of seafloor animals that produced new representatives that have survived to the present.
3. Understand why rudists became the dominant reef builders in mid-Cretaceous time.
4. Understand the role that the Cretaceous expansion of marine predators played in the general changes that occurred in marine life.
5. Be able to describe the Cretaceous evolutionary radiation of flowering plants and explain why they were so successful.
6. Know the kinds of animals that populated the Cretaceous landscape and the new traits that mammals evolved.
7. Understand why Cretaceous fossils and the record of deposition are much more extensive than those for earlier systems.
8. Be able to describe the major events in the continuing breakup of Pangea in Cretaceous time.
9. Understand why sea level rose during the Early Cretaceous and remained high throughout mid-Cretaceous time.
10. Know the patterns of mid-Cretaceous marine deposition and how they were related to ocean chemistry, circulation, and climate.
11. Be able to explain the evidence that an asteroid impact caused the terminal Cretaceous mass extinction.
12. Understand the effects of the impact on Earth's systems and how these effects would have led to the mass extinction.
13. Be able to explain how and why certain groups of animals and plants survived the terminal Cretaceous crisis and expanded afterward.
14. Be able to describe the orogenies and geologic features of western North America during the Cretaceous Period.
15. Understand how the Cretaceous Interior Seaway evolved and the effects it had on sediment deposition east of the Cordilleran mountains.
16. Be able to describe how the modern continental shelf developed on the east coast of North America.
17. Know how and when the great chalk deposits of Europe accumulated.