THE NASHVILLE TENNESSEAN ORIGIN OF GULF STATES IS TOLD Structure of Area in Prehis- toric Days Reviewed The Gulf States were told Tues- day just what they are and how they came to be. The structure of each state was described in detail at a symposium participated in by geologists and geographers attending the conven- tion of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the whole process was summarized by Prof Charles Schuchert of Yale. "For tens of millions of years," he related, "all of the gulf states, with the exception of Florida, were more or less of a highland, border- ed on the south by an inland sea, whose depth was measured in hun- dreds of feet, rather than by the deep gulf of today, which in places goes down below 12,000 feet. "During this time the drainage of much of the interior of North America flowed southwestward probably into the Gulf of Califor- nia. Then the land from eastern Texas and Oklahoma eastward across the gulf states into the Atlantic began to sink, possibly most markedly along what is now the Mississippi valley, but finally throughout the area from South Carolina to central Texas and in a trough narrowing northward across Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky into southern Illinois