Coral reefs, Sinai, Egypt: A historical perspective

Abstract

This note complements and supplements the historical perspective of a paper in which Strasser and Strohmenger (1997) related diagenesis to tectonics, sea-level, and climate. Johannes Walther (1888) studied a fossil reef at Ras Muhammed at 6 meters below sea level and suggested that it had subsided. W.F. Hume (1906) described raised coral reefs along the western shore of the Gulf of Aqaba. He suggested a Pleistocene or post-Pleistocene movement of the shoreline of the Gulf. Hume cited Walther's observations of the reef at 6 meters below sea-level as evidence for subsidence. I discovered a fossil reef (Friedman 1966) which gave a radiocarbon age of 477±140 years B.P. This reef reflects either Recent tectonic movement of the Gulf's shoreline or lowering of sea level. Like modern reefs, this fossil reef is composed of aragonite and high-magnesian calcite with subordinate low-magnesian calcite sporadically present (Fig. 1). In modern Red Sea reefs peloids of high-magnesian calcite in cryptocrystalline high-magnesian calcite cement are interpreted as calcified algal filaments.