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| Went on a Carnival Cruise to Cozumel, where I scuba dived for the first time! |
Cozumel is an island in the Caribbean Sea off the eastern coast of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. The Yucatan is a karstic terrain. Karst is an area of irregular limestone in which erosion has produced fissures, sinkholes, underground streams, and caverns, all as a result of carbonation-solution. Marine calcareous sediments, also known as
limestone (See figures 1 & 2), make up the terrain of the Yucatan peninsula. Moreover, the peninsula is a tectonically stable platform whose current form was created by plates and faults during the early Cenozoic epoch.
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| Figure 1 - Cozumel Shoreline with limestone |
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| Figure 2 - Tufa limestone |
Cozumel Island is the emergent surface of a horst block (a table of land pushed upward between two normal fault lines - see figure 3 below) capped by 122,000 year old Pleistocene limestone.
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| Figure 3 - Horst block |
Kendra,
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure when you posted this, but it's nicely done. I'm going to Cozumel and only have one day on the island. Wondering what would be the coolest geological thing to do. Scuba sounds great but I don't have any experience so not sure if they would let me do it.
We love learning about the geology of a spot before we vacation. I blog about traveling with the kids and making the holidays educational. This is really helpful!
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