Figure 1. Left side: Map showing bounding faults and folds of the Arabian platform. Right side: location map of the intersection of the Euphrates depression with the Palmyride mountains.

The Intraplate Euphrates System-Palmyrides Mountain Belt Junction and Relationship to Arabian Plate Boundary Tectonics*

Douglas Alsdorf1, Muawia Barazangi1, Robert Litak1, Dogan Seber1,Tarif Sawaf2, and Damen Al-Saad2
1Institute for the Study of the Continents and Department of Geological Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA
2Syrian Petroleum Company, Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, Damascus, Syria

*Published in Annali di Geofisica, v.38, n.3-4,pp.285-397,1995

Abstract. We interpret seismic data and well logs to indicate that the Euphrates graben, intersecting orthogonally with the Palmyride mountains, is an intraplate transtensional feature that probably developed in response to plate boundary stress created by a latest Cretaceous convergence event along the present-day northern boundary of the Arabian plate. The principal stress direction is proposed to lie generally parallel to the graben; hence, it may have formed as a tear in the Arabian crust while, as previously documented, the Palmyride region underwent shortening and uplift. Although Arabian plate boundary tectonism as well as shortening in the Palmyrides were periodically active during the entire Cenozoic, especially in Neogene and Quaternary time, the normal fault motions which formed the Euphrates graben were active within the study area only during the uppermost Cretaceous (Campanian-Maastrichtian). A broad, Cenozoic depression overlying the Euphrates graben and most of eastern Syria is possibly related to the Mesopotamian foredeep that developed in response to the nearby Zagros continental collision zone during Neogene and Quaternary time. Cenozoic strike slip faults lie between the graben and the Palmyrides and may kinematically separate the Palmyrides from the Euphrates system.

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