Style of extensional tectonism during rifting, Red Sea and Gulf of Aden

Abstract

Models describing the development of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, prior to the present periods of sea-floor spreading, include those that use block faulting on steep normal faults, uniform diffuse shear in continental crust, simple shear on large detachment faults that cut the entire lithosphere, combinations involving detachment faults/ductile deformation/plutonic inflation, and ones that minimize the role of mechanical extension in favor of an earlier stage of sea-floor spreading. Geologic and geophysical studies from the Arabian continental margin in the southern Red Sea and LANDSAT analysis of the northern Somalia margin in the Gulf of Aden suggest that the early continental rifts were long narrow features that formed by extension on closely spaced normal faults above moderate- to shallow-dipping detachments with break-away zones defining one rift flank and root zones under the opposing rift flank. The rift flanks presently form the opposing continental margins across each ocean basin. The detachment on the Arabian margin dips gently to the west, with a breakaway zone now eroded above the deeply dissected terrain of the Arabian escarpment. The Arabian detachment projects westward to middle crustal levels beneath the sediment of the southern Red Sea coastal plain. Strata in the upper plate dip as steeply as 60° to the west, and the beds are repeated by numerous planar and listric normal faults that dip to the east. Most of the faults truncate downward at the detachment. Thus, the upper plate is highly extended and the rocks in its eastern part have been translated about 20 km westward and 21/2- to 5-km downward relative to the rest of Arabia. A prominent detachment surface, with a north dip, is evident in northernmost Somalia where it breaks away north of the Somalian escarpment in an otherwise undeformed section of cratonic strata of Jurassic to Eocene age. The upper plate of the Somalian detachment consists of a highly faulted collage of the cratonic strata. This fault projects to middle crustal levels in the opposing Arabian margin to the northeast.