North Sinai-Levant rift-transform continental margin

Conference · Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 1985 · Geol. Soc. Am., Abstr. Programs; (United States)

OSTI ID:6198169

Ressetar, R; Schamel, S; Travis, C J

The passive continental margin of northern Egypt and the Levant coast formed during the Early mesozoic as the relatively small Anatolia plate broke away from northern Africa. The oceanic basin of the eastern Mediterranean and the unusual right-angle bend in the North Sinai-Levant shelf margin are both products of plate separation along a rift-transform fracture system, the south arm of Tethys. The north-south trending Levant transform margin is considerably narrower than the east-west trending rift margin of northern Egypt. Both exhibit similar facies and depositional histories through the mid-Tertiary. Analysis of subsurface data and published reports of the regional stratigraphy point to a three-stage tectonic evolution of this passive margin. The Triassic through mid-Cretaceous was marked by crustal breakup followed by rapid rotational subsidence of the shelf margins about hinge lines located just south and east of the present shorelines. Reef carbonates localized on the shelf edge separated a deep marine basin to the north from a deltaic-shallow marine platform to the south and east. In the Late Cretaceous-Early Tertiary, inversion of earlier formed half-grabens produced broad anticlinal upwarps of the Syrian Arc on the shelf margin that locally influenced facies patterns. The episode of inversion corresponds with the onset of northward subduction of the Africa plate beneath southern Asia. Beginning in the Oligocene and continuing to the present, there has been renewed subsidence of the North Sinai shelf margin beneath thick, outward building clastic wedges. The source of this large volume of sediment is the updomed and erosionally stripped margins of the Suez-Red Sea Rift and the redirected Nile River.

• Research Organization: Univ. of South Carolina, Columbia (USA)
• OSTI ID: 6198169
• Report Number(s): CONF-8510489-
• Journal Information: Geol. Soc. Am., Abstr. Programs; (United States), Vol. 17; Conference: 98. annual meeting of the Geological Society of America, Orlando, FL, USA, 28 Oct 1985
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

58 GEOSCIENCES
CONTINENTAL MARGIN
GEOLOGIC HISTORY
PLATE TECTONICS
STRATIGRAPHY
EGYPTIAN ARAB REPUBLIC
DEPOSITION
RIFT ZONES
SEDIMENTARY ROCKS
SUBDUCTION ZONES
AFRICA
DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
GEOLOGIC STRUCTURES
GEOLOGY
ROCKS
TECTONICS
580201* - Geophysics- Seismology & Tectonics- (1980-1989)
580100 - Geology & Hydrology- (-1989)