Halokinetic deep‐seated slumping on the mediterranean slope of northern Sinai and southern Israel

Abstract

The continental margin of northern Sinai and Israel consists of a seaward‐inclined wedge, made up predominantly of foreset beds of mainly Nile‐derived clastics. They overlie seaward‐thickening Messinian (Upper Miocene) evaporites. Detailed bathymetric and seismic surveys reveal large areas of sea floor disturbances off northern Sinai and in several places off Israel, expressed by a complex block topography of the outer continental shelf and slope. These disturbed areas appear to be gigantic, deep‐seated, compound rotational slumps over down‐slope flowing evaporites. Many of the disturbances are above landward lobes of evaporites which fill buried Late Miocene erosion channels of the pre‐Messinian retreat of the sea. Flowage of the evaporites was presumably caused by excessive pore pressures, generated by the Pliocene‐Quaternary overload, in confined layers of the elastics interbedded within the evaporites.