Transactions of the 16th Caribbean Geological Conference, Barbados. Caribbean Journal of Earth Science, 39 (2005), 69-82. © Geological Society of Jamaica. A simple synthesis of Caribbean geology KEITH H. JAMES Consultant Geologist, Plaza de la Cebada, 3, 09346 Covarrubias (Burgos), Spain, and Honorary Departmental Fellow, Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, Aberystwyth, Wales, UK. E-mail:
[email protected] ABSTRACT. The complex area between the continental masses of North and South America is a collage of many continental, stretched continental, island arc and oceanic elements described by numerous works. Some areas are poorly exposed and not well known. Others are intensely explored and well documented. Syntheses of this geology popularly derive the Caribbean Plate from the Pacific and require major rotation of island arc elements and continental blocks along with major changes in plate migration direction. These models are complex and geometrically unlikely. This paper suggests a simple, in situ evolution from a Pangean configuration principally via regional (North - South America), Jurassic-Late Cretaceous, WNW oriented sinistral transtension, followed by a Palaeocene–Middle Eocene compressional event and Oligocene-Recent, E-W strike-slip between the Caribbean and American Plates. 1. INTRODUCTION southern Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador. Extended continental crust forms the The Middle America area of this paper lies northern part of the Gulf of Mexico, the eastern between the continental masses of North and margin of Mexico, the eastern and western South America (Fig. 1). The present-day margins of the Florida Platform, the eastern Caribbean Plate interacts with Atlantic plates to Bahamas Platform and the Nicaragua the north, south and east and with the Nazca and Rise/Jamaica and the Guyana Platform.