ABSTRACT
Central America has a complex geology related to five plates (North America, Caribbean, Cocos, Nazca, and South America), several blocks (Maya, Chortis, Chorotega, Chocó), and an unknown number of terranes (see Chapters 8 and 11). The southern part of Central America exhibits stratigraphic and structural features very different from those found in northern Central America, but in some aspects similar to the north part of South America. These contrasting differences were first noticed by early investigators (see [1, 2] for details), who divided the area into two distinct geological provinces: a northern one, comprising Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, and northern Nicaragua; and a southern one, comprising southern Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. Schuchert [3] referred to the northern part as “Nuclear Central America”, and the southern as the “Isthmian Link”, which was later termed the “Southern Central America orogen” [4, 5]. Northern Central America was later subdivided into the Maya and Chortis blocks. No rocks of pre-Mesozoic age are known in southern Central America, in contrast to the Chortis and Maya blocks [6]. The Chortis* block forms the only Precambrian-Paleozoic continental part of the present-day Caribbean plate and provides a link between the tectonic history of the Caribbean region and the cordillera of western North America [7]. Central America contains a large number of sedimentary basins (see Chapter 30), which are not well defined in terms of size and stratigraphy (Fig. 13.1). Difficult access has hindered petroleum exploration in many of these basins.
