| Considerable amount of thin interbedded limestones and shales was deposited in a subtropical and shallow-marine epicontinental sea during the Cincinnatian Epoch. |
| This global regression subsequently led to the withdrawal of seawater from a large part of the Pangean shelves and epicontinental seas. |
| This was accompanied by a substantial shrinking of habitable marine shelf area and draining of much of the epicontinental seas. |
| Fossils of marine life characterize the Mississippian Period, as shallow epicontinental seas covered the United States at that time. |
| Such phenomena are unusual, if not unique, in the extra-Alpine Mesozoic epicontinental seas, and calls for a rather special explanation. |
| It constituted part of a Late Ordovician epicontinental fauna that once spread widely in shallow, equatorial seas of North America. |
