From the large quantity of published geologic data that has been collected as the result of hydrocarbon exploration, academic research, and related geologic mapping, a detailed history of the Hudson Bay basin has been reconstructed. During the majority of the Cambrian Period, this basin did not exist. Rather, this part of the Canadian Shield area was still topographically high and emergent. It was only during the later part of the Cambrian that the rising sea level of the Sauk marine transgression slowly submerged it. During the Ordovician, this part of the Canadian Shield continued to be submerged by rising sea levels except for a brief middle Ordovician marine regression. Only starting in the Late Ordovician and continuing into the Silurian did the gradual regional subsidence of this part of the Canadian Shield form the Hudson Bay basin. The formation of this basin resulted in the accumulation of black bituminous oil shale and evaporite deposits within its centre, thick basin-margin limestone and dolomite, and the development of extensive reefs that ringed the basin margins that were tectonically uplifted as the basin subsided. During Middle Silurian times, subsidence ceased and this basin was uplifted. It generated an emergent arch, on which reefs grew, that divided the basin into eastern and western sub-basins. During the Devonian Period, this basin filled with terrestrial red beds that interfinger with marine limestone and dolomites. Before deposition was terminated by marine regression, Upper Devonian black bituminous shale accumulated in the south-east of the basin.