Abstract Middle Eocene compression resulted in formation of the Sierra Madre Oriental fold and thrust belt and end-early Miocene compression resulted in formation of the Chiapas-Campeche fold and thrust belt. These events mask the importance of other periods of deformation, principally in the Middle–Late Jurassic, Late Cretaceous, and Paleogene. Deformation is represented by folding, thick-skinned thrusting, basin inversion, and development of major angular unconformities. Associated features include development of karstification, production of breccias, onlap, lowstand wedges, seeding of carbonate platforms, entry of siliciclastic sediments into carbonate basins, significant switches in input directions of clastic sedimentary systems, initiation of extensional tectonism basinward of the compressive deformation front and igneous activity. We propose that, during the late Mesozoic and the Cenozoic, Pacific plate-margin compressive deformation often extended eastward into the Gulf of Mexico. Two main belts of deformation are identified, which are linked back to Pacific plate-margin processes by postulated deep-seated faults. The first and outer (easternmost) belt is seen on regional seismic lines as a long-wavelength, easterly facing, monoclonal fold that developed close to the transition of thick into thinned continental crust. The Sierra Madre Oriental is the second belt of which the structural history already has been well described in the literature. Where salt is present at depth, compressional events are expressed only as laterally propagated thin-skinned folds and thrusts. These events are of critical importance in that they contribute many unique geologic features that cumulatively give Mexico a world-class petroleum system.

Abstract Carbonate sequences and parasequences that formed under known or inferred 1 to 40 m.y. tectono-eustatic and 20 to 400 k.y. Milankovitch low to high amplitude sea level changes are shown to leave distinctive diagenetic records. On carbonate platforms, low amplitude, high frequency sea level fluctuations typical of global green-house times form thick accumulations of meter-scale cycles with regional tidal flat caps, and there is only limited erosion of cycle tops. Humid climate cycles have early cemented, typically undolomitized intertidal fenestral caps and some supratidal laminites; aragonite fossils commonly are leached. If the climate is sufficiently arid, the cycles are dolomitized and aragonite is leached during falling sea level. Primary intergranular and moldic porosity is preserved in lower parts of cycles, and intercrystal and vuggy porosity is present in dolomitized subtidal facies and laminite caps beneath cycle top anhydrites and fine dolomite. Moderate amplitude, high frequency fluctuations in sea level occur during times of intermediate continental glaciation. Cycles commonly have muddy facies grading up into grain-rich facies; they lack tidal flat facies and instead have small scale karstic surfaces or caliche directly over shallow subtidal facies. In humid climates, cementation plugs porosity in the upper phreatic zone, typically in grainstones just below the karstic surface. Zoned cement overgrowths in the deeper phreatic zone, although volumetrically minor, show a partial to complete record of high frequency sea level fluctuations that affected the sequence.