Internal configuration of the Levantine Basin from seismic reflection data(eastern Mediterranean)

In the easternmost Mediterranean. the Levantine Basin is filled by up to 10 km of Mesozoic to Recent sediments next to the Alpine deformation front of the Cyprean Arc, near the junction between Africa and Arabia. Away from th e deformation front the basin has undergone little deformation for the past 100 Ma as evidenced by deep seismic reflection profiles. Mostly subhorizon tal reflections image the undisturbed sedimentation above a possibly Paleoz oic basement. Two marked reflections are identified within the sedimentary fill (M and K). They correspond to unconformities near the deformation fron t and their laterally equivalent concordant surfaces basinward. In the deep est part of the basin there are more than 4 km of Tertiary to Recent sedime nts, within which the M-reflection is well defined above the 1.5 km thick M essinian evaporites and beneath the 500 m thick Plio-Quaternary sedimentary sequence. Pre-Tertiary sediments reach up to 6 km thick beneath the K-refl ection and above the top basement reflection. They are little deformed and possibly correspond to Late Jurassic-Cretaceous age. The limit with the Cyp rean Are deformation front is a sharp tectonic boundary south of the Hecate aus Rise, where the whole sedimentary fill terminates against a subvertical fault zone that can be followed down to more than 14 km depth. To the east ; this limit changes into a 30 km wide zone of strike-slip deformation that includes flower structures progressively buried basinward by Tertiary to R ecent syntectonic sediments. Possibly since Paleocene times, the basin corr esponds to the almost undisturbed part of a larger basin whose northern sid e has been incorporated within the Alpine deformation of the Cyprean Are, a nd limited to the east by the Dead Sea transform system. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.