The structure of the Africa-Anatolia plate boundary in the eastern Mediterranean

New marine deep seismic reflection data from south of Cyprus to the Syrian coast provide images of the upper crustal structure of the Cyprean Are indi cating that the deformation is partitioned along strike-slip fault systems distributed over a wide zone, rather than forming a sharp plate boundary be tween African and Anatolian plates. Three major submarine strike-slip fault systems, tens of kilometers in length, are mapped, which follow bathymetri c features and merge together toward the east. These structures exhibit the three-dimensional characteristics typical of strike-slip deformation zones throughout the seven pre-stack depth-migrated sections, including several sets of positive flower structures forming bathymetric ridges, and the inte rvening contemporaneous subbasins. Beneath the Plio-Quaternary sediments (5 00 m thick) that are blanketing the whole area and that reflect only the ma in surface traces of the fault systems, the subbasins are of varied dimensi ons and have rapid lateral changes in the thickness of the sedimentary fill . They include two major unconformities that have been correlated throughou t the data marked by the hi and K reflections. The hi reflection is well im aged above varied thickness of Messinian evaporites, and the K reflection c ommonly appears at the base of syntectonic Tertiary age sediments. Within t he eastern Cyprean Are the K reflection corresponds to the basement-cover c ontact, indicating that the strike-slip tectonic scenario may have been act ive since the uppermost Cretaceous or lowermost Paleogene times to present. The active deformation front of the Alpine belt in the eastern Mediterrane an corresponds to a strike-slip fault system that forms a 110 degrees are a nd coincides at the southern slope of the Hecateaus Rise, continuing along the Latakia Ridge to the Syrian coast. The mapped structures fit within a g eneral kinematic framework of left-lateral transcurrent deformation that tr ansfers slip from the subduction zone southwest of Cyprus into the Dead Sea transform system in the east. This change in the mode of deformation at th e Africa-Anatolia plate boundary occurs toward the junction between African , Anatolian, and Arabian plates.