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The Turgai Sea, also known as the Turgay Sea, Turgai Strait, Obik Sea, Ural Sea or West Siberian Sea, was a large shallow body of salt water (an epicontinental or
epeiric sea An inland sea (also known as an epeiric sea or an epicontinental sea) is a continental body of water which is very large and is either completely surrounded by dry land or connected to an ocean by a river, strait, or "arm of the sea". An inland se ...
) during the
Mesozoic The Mesozoic Era ( ), also called the Age of Reptiles, the Age of Conifers, and colloquially as the Age of the Dinosaurs is the second-to-last era of Earth's geological history, lasting from about , comprising the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceo ...
through
Cenozoic The Cenozoic ( ; ) is Earth's current geological era, representing the last 66million years of Earth's history. It is characterised by the dominance of mammals, birds and flowering plants, a cooling and drying climate, and the current configura ...
Era An era is a span of time defined for the purposes of chronology or historiography, as in the regnal eras in the history of a given monarchy, a calendar era used for a given calendar, or the geological eras defined for the history of Earth. Compa ...
s. It extended north of the present-day
Caspian Sea The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, often described as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia; east of the Caucasus, west of the broad steppe of Central Asia ...
to the "paleo-Arctic" region, and was in existence from the
Middle Jurassic The Middle Jurassic is the second epoch of the Jurassic Period. It lasted from about 174.1 to 163.5 million years ago. Fossils of land-dwelling animals, such as dinosaurs, from the Middle Jurassic are relatively rare, but geological formations co ...
to
Oligocene The Oligocene ( ) is a geologic epoch of the Paleogene Period and extends from about 33.9 million to 23 million years before the present ( to ). As with other older geologic periods, the rock beds that define the epoch are well identified but the ...
, approximately 160 to 29 million years ago. The Turgai Sea was not absolutely continuous throughout this entire era, though it was a persistent and predominating feature in its region; it "fragmented southern Europe and southwestern Asia into many large islands, and separated Europe from Asia." The division of the
Eurasia Eurasia (, ) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it spans from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Japanese archipelago a ...
n landmass by the Turgai Sea had the effect of isolating animal populations. One of the better known groups are the
ceratopsia Ceratopsia or Ceratopia ( or ; Greek: "horned faces") is a group of herbivorous, beaked dinosaurs that thrived in what are now North America, Europe, and Asia, during the Cretaceous Period, although ancestral forms lived earlier, in the Jurassic. ...
n
dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is t ...
s during the
Cretaceous Period The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of t ...
, which were restricted to Asia and western North America that were connected for much of the era. The existence of the Turgai Sea also restricted various freshwater fish and amphibians. The Turgai Sea derives its name from the
Turgay Basin Turgay is a Turkish given name for males. People named Turgay include: * Turgay Avcı, Turkish Cypriot politician * Turgay Bahadır, Turkish-Austrian footballer * Turgay Gemicibasi, Turkish footballer * Turgay Semercioğlu, Turkish footballer * Tu ...
of modern-day
Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbeki ...
, where a stretch of the
Turgai River The Turgay ( orɣai"Tour-GUY") (also known as Torgai, Torghay or Turgai; kk, Торғай, Romanised: ''Torğai''; russian: Тургай Romanised: ''Turgay'') is a river in Kazakhstan.
flows.Tectonic units and division of the South Turgay Basin.
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See also

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References

Historical oceans Jurassic paleogeography Cretaceous paleogeography Paleogene paleogeography {{palaeo-geo-stub