The Flower Garden banks, the most prominent of a series of topographic highs in the northwest Gulf of Mexico, have been noted and studied for years. Most of these physiographic expressions have been related to salt uplift. Previous investigations of the Flower Garden banks, located 130 mi south-southeast of Galveston, Texas, suggest that biohermal development has contributed significantly to the overall topographic expression.

The results of this study demonstrate that biohermal development during the present interglacial period occurred in a deep water environment in the northwest Gulf of Mexico; therefore, it is possible that buried fossil reefs formed within structural and depositional environments similar to those existing today on the outer continental shelf. If there are such fossil reefs, they offer a previously unrecognized exploratory objective on known structural features.

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