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 the deformation front the basin has undergone little deformation for the past 100 Ma as evidenced by deep seismic reflection profiles. Mostly subhorizontal reflections image the undisturbed sedimentation above a possibly Paleozoic basement. Two marked reflections are identified within the sedimentary fill (M and K). They correspond to unconformities near the deformation front and their laterally equivalent concordant surfaces basinward. In the deepest part of the basin there are more than 4 km of Tertiary to Recent sediments, within which the M-reflection is well defined above the 1.5 km thick Messinian evaporites and beneath the 500 m thick Plio¯Quaternary sedimentary sequence. Pre-Tertiary sediments reach up to 6 km thick beneath the K-reflection and above the top basement reflection. They are little deformed and possibly correspond to Late Jurassic¯Cretaceous age. The limit with the Cyprean Arc deformation front is a sharp tectonic boundary south of the Hecateaus 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 Recent syntectonic sediments. Possibly since Paleocene times, the basin corresponds to the almost undisturbed part of a larger basin whose northern side has been incorporated within the Alpine deformation of the Cyprean Arc, and limited to the east by the Dead Sea transform system.