Evolution of the Levant margin and western Arabia platform since the Mesozoic: introduction

Abstract

AbstractThe Levant area comprises the offshore Levant Basin (LB) (eastern corner of the Eastern Mediterranean) as well as the adjacent continental slopes and platforms of the African and Arabian plates. This area experienced major events of the geodynamical evolution of the Middle East, such as the Late Palaeozoic–Early Mesozoic Pangea break up, the Late Cretaceous–Cenozoic closure of the Neo-Tethys and individualization of the Arabian plate, as well as a set of external factors like global sea-level and climate changes. This volume combines original data from the offshore and onshore Levant in various fields, including sedimentology, palaeontology, sequence stratigraphy, geochemistry, structural geology, stress reconstitution and geophysics (seismic lines, palaeomagnetism). All together, these multidisciplinary approaches allow the review of the development of the LB and gain a better insight on the later geological history and deformation processes of the Levant provinces.