Dead Sea Rift
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Dead Sea Rift is part of the Syrian-African Rift<ref>Attallah, M. 1991. Origin and evaluation of The Dead Sea. In: Geothe-Institut, Geology of Jordan, Al Kutba Publishes.</ref> in a long fissure in the Earth's surface called the Great Rift Valley. The 6000 km (3700 mile) long Great Rift Valley extends from the Taurus Mountains of Turkey to the Zambezi Valley in southern Africa and formed in Miocene times as a result of the Arabian Plate moving northward then eastward, away from the African Plate.
The extensive tectonic activity of the Dead Sea Rift in the southern Wadi Araba, since early Miocene, resulted in very clear landscape expressions. The Dead Sea occupies the lowest part of the Rift Valley and located within the Dead Sea Transform which is a plate boundary separating the Arabian plate from the African plate and connects the divergent plate boundary in the Red Sea to the convergent plate boundary in the Red Sea to the convergent plate boundary in the Taurus mountains in southern Turkey<ref>Barberi, F., Capaldi, G., Gasperini, R., Marinelli, G., Santacrose R. Scandone, R., Treuil, M., and Vaert, J. 1980. Recent basaltic volcanism of Jordan and its implications on the geodynamic history of the Dead Sea shear zone. Int. Symp. Geodynamic of the afro-Arabian Rift System (Rome), pp. 667-682.</ref>.
