Gulf of Mexico Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico () is an ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States, on the southwest and south by Mexico, and on the southeast by Cuba. The U.S. states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida border the Gulf on the north, which are often referred to as the "Third Coast", in comparison with the U.S. Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The Gulf of Mexico formed approximately 300 million years
Structural evolution of the Louisiana gulf coast The observation of minibasins (small sedimentary basins) and other features have suggested that the salt in the Gulf of Mexico primarily moves by spreading under differential sedimentary loading, which needs many conditions (e.g. huge amounts of deposited material above the salt) to be met. However, models and observation of the northern Gulf of Mexico favor gliding via slope instability. Controversies such as this example indicate that this area is structurally complicated. During the Mesozoic Era, the supercontinent Pangaea began to rift apart, forming the Gulf of Mexico basin within the late Triassic and early Jurassic periods. The rifting was accompanied