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The Sundance Sea was an epeiric sea which existed in North America during the mid to late Jurassic Period of the Mesozoic Era.<ref>http://www.usd.edu/~skfannin/sundance.htm Fanning, Suzette, "Stratigraphy of the Sundance Formation". Retrieved 11/27/06.</ref> It was an arm of what is now the Arctic Ocean, and extended through what is now western Canada into the central western United States. The sea receded when highlands to the west began to rise.

[edit] Stratigraphy

The Sundance Sea did not occur at a single time; geological evidence suggests that the Sea was actually a series of five successive marine transgressions--each separated by an erosional hiatus--which advanced and receded from the middle Jurassic onward.<ref>Ibid.</ref> The terrestrial sediments of the Morrison Formation--eroded from rising highlands to the west--were deposited on top of the marine Sundance sediments as the sea regressed for the last time late in the Jurassic.<ref>http://geology.csustan.edu/kuehn/Geol2200/Mesozoic2_4.pdf</ref>,<ref>http://server1.thermopwy.net/bhbf/messtrat.html "Mesozoic Stratigraphy in the Thermopolis Area". Retrieved 11/27/06.</ref>

The sedimentary rocks which formed in and around the Sundance Sea are often rich in fossils.

[edit] Reference:

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[edit] External links:

• Map of North America in the middle Jurassic, with the location of the Sundance Sea