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
Gulf of Mexico basin shallow-marine siliciclastics; eventually sediments grade into the Cretaceous carbonates, evaporites, and chalks. More recently, the Laramide Orogeny and consequential uplift of the Rocky Mountains, which led to increased sediments flooding the gulf, is responsible for the rapid loading and burial of the Wilcox Formation (pg 43), which is one of the deepwater Gulf of Mexico formations currently being exploited for hydrocarbons. This rapid loading is also responsible for the first salt flows from beneath the basin-margin region towards the continental slope. Gulf of Mexico basin The formation of the Gulf of Mexico, an oceanic rift basin located between North America