Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 May 2016
A preliminary comparison of Early Cretaceous paleocommunities in the Caribbean and contiguous Southern Western Interior provinces of North America suggests that the important factors for the differences were climate, basinal tectonics, sedimentation rates and the resulting substrates, environmental heterogeneity, evolution rates, and migration paths. Some paleocommunities were endemic to one province, and others were found in both provinces but differed in relative abundance patterns, species composition, diversity, and trophic structure.