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Late Miocene normal faulting beneath the northern Nile Delta: NNW propagation of the Gulf of Suez Rift

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Abstract

The north Egyptian continental margin has undergone passive margin subsidence since the opening of Tethys, but its post-Mesozoic history has been interrupted by tectonic events that include a phase of extensional faulting in the Late Miocene. This study characterizes the geometry and distribution of Late Miocene normal faulting beneath the northern Nile Delta and addresses the relationship of this faulting to the north–northwestwards propagation of Red Sea–Gulf of Suez rifting at this time. Structural interpretation of a 2D grid of seismic reflection data has defined a Tortonian–Messinian syn-rift megasequence, when tied to well data. Normal fault correlations between seismic lines are constrained by the mapping of fault-related folds. Faults are evenly distributed across the study area and are found to strike predominantly NW–SE to NNW–SSE, with some N–S faults in the north. Faults are interpreted to be <10 km in length, typically in the range 3–6 km. This suggests that rifting in the northern Nile Delta did not proceed beyond a continental rift initiation phase, with distributed, relatively small-scale faults. This contrasts with the Gulf of Suez Rift, where faulting continued to a more evolved fault localization phase, with block-bounding faults >25 km in length. Results suggest that future studies could quantify fault evolution from rift initiation to fault linkage to displacement localization, by studying the spatial variation in faulting from the northern Nile Delta, south–southeastwards to the Gulf of Suez Rift.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the Belayim Petroleum Company (PETROBEL) and the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC) for access to and permission to publish the subsurface data. Many thanks are due to the Egyptian Government for the Channel Mission of M. Sarhan to the University of Leeds. The authors also thank Fadi H. Nader for constructive comments on the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geology Department, Faculty of Science, Damietta University, Damietta, Egypt

    Mohammad A. Sarhan & Ahmed Basal

  2. Basin Structure Group, School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK

    Richard E. Ll. Collier

  3. Biology and Geology Department, Faculty of Education, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt

    Mohamed Hamed Abdel Aal

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  1. Mohammad A. Sarhan
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  2. Richard E. Ll. Collier
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  3. Ahmed Basal
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  4. Mohamed Hamed Abdel Aal
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Correspondence to Mohammad A. Sarhan.

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Sarhan, M.A., Collier, R.E.L., Basal, A. et al. Late Miocene normal faulting beneath the northern Nile Delta: NNW propagation of the Gulf of Suez Rift. Arab J Geosci 7, 4563–4571 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-013-1089-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-013-1089-9

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