The Honduras basin is an intracontinental salient of a large marginal geosyncline that borders the southern side of the geanticline which divides northern Central America. During Mesozoic and Cenozoic time, 10,000-25,000 feet of sediments were deposited in the Honduras basin. No thick evaporite deposits have been found, suggesting the geosyncline was an open communication with the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

The Triassic and Jurassic periods are represented by 3,000 feet of deltaic, littoral clastics. The Lower Cretaceous is composed of 2,000 feet of black, shaly limestones containing oil seeps; 2,500 feet of red clastics; 2,000-6,000 feet of massive rudistid and miliolid limestones; and 2,000 feet of conglomerates and clastics derived from the lower formations.

The Laramide orogeny divided the Honduras basin into the Ulua basin on the west and the Mosquitia embayment on the east. The main trough of the marginal geosyncline shifted south, and 35,000 feet of sediments were deposited in the area of Lake Nicaragua during Upper Cretaceous and Tertiary time.

The Ulua basin received 2,000 feet of Upper Cretaceous and Eocene redbeds and limestones and then remained a positive area during the remainder of Cenozoic time. Compressive folding during the mid-Tertiary Antillean revolution, formed distinct east-west geanticlinal belts. Volcanism, beginning during this period and continuing until recent time, was responsible for the thick cover of flows and tuffs along the Pacific coast of Central America.

The Mosquitia area of northeast Honduras and northern Nicaragua became a major embayment during Upper Cretaceous and Tertiary time. Thirteen hundred feet of Upper Cretaceous limestones and shales and 15,000 feet of Tertiary flood-plain and marine clastics underlie the broad Mosquitia continental shelf and extend eastward into the Caribbean Sea 150 miles.

The Pliocene-Pleistocene Cascadian orogeny was responsible for the present-day topography of northern Central America. Wrench fault tectonics probably explain the complex structure of this region.

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