>>2837815
>>flooded land would create shallow seas ideal for massive reefs and marine ecosystems to form

Supposedly this was an enormously important aspect of what made Cretaceous marine fauna & flora so fertile and abundant. The 'shallow' seas creating an ideal pelagic zone due to the warm waters and better access to sunshine allowing for more food for algae, corals, bivalves, and fish spawning sites. You look at the world map and enormous sections of the world, entire portions of continents, were below sea level and existed as warm shallow reefs. I also think the fact that the seas went so far inland also helped with humidity and transporting moisture further inland.

I think it's in Mitchell, Oregon, but they found a stupidly enormous fossilized guano bed back in 2023 that could be 9 miles long. It's literally just generations upon generations of pterodactyl and seabird shit, fish bones, ammonite shells, piled several feet thick. This is, in another way, how a fertile shallow sea produces more nutrients: that shit shelf having transferred millions of tons of calcium, phosphorus, nitrogen, potassium, from sea to land.

I think the continents during the Cretaceous would make for a particularly fun game of Civilization.