The geological community has broadly accepted that the region of NE Africa and NW Arabia deformed... more The geological community has broadly accepted that the region of NE Africa and NW Arabia deformed under tension during the post-Hercynian disintegration of northern Gondwana. Further, it has also generally accepted that sedimentation occurred within extensional half-grabens that formed along the length of what was then the southern margin of the Neo-Tethys Ocean. Consensus is that Alpine age compression then forced inversion of these half-grabens to form the well-known Syrian Arc structures that stretch from the Western Desert of Egypt to NE Syria. As new data has become available (Enclosures I and II), there are indications that an alternative mechanism, founded in continuous compression rather than extension then compression, better explains the tectonics and sedimentary history of the region since the late Palaeozoic. Data from Syria, Jordan, the Levant and Egypt demonstrate that distinct post-Hercynian Orogeny, Tethyan and Alpine sequences (basins) lie on a final, deeply eroded ...
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