Nature of crust in the central Red Sea

Abstract

A transition between continental crust in the northern Red Sea and oceanic crust in the southern Red Sea coincides broadly with a southward increase in plate tectonic separation rate and with a decrease in upper mantle seismic velocity. We re-evaluate here the nature of crust in the intervening central Red Sea with the results of legacy seismic refraction experiments and recently released marine gravity anomalies derived from satellite altimeter measurements. In the refraction data, collected east of Thetis Deep, velocities of 6.6–6.9kms−1 of a deep refracting layer, which are similar to measured velocities of unaltered gabbro samples, extend outside the deep to 65km from the axis. The new version of the marine gravity field reveals trends crossing the central Red Sea. Whereas some of them connect with major lineaments in the surrounding African-Arabian shield, those around Thetis Deep die out towards the coastlines. They can be paired across the ridge and lie slightly oblique to plate motions, as is typical of oceanic fracture zones or non-transform discontinuities migrating away from hotspots. Taken together these observations support the view that an oceanic rather than extended continental crust underlies this part of the central Red Sea.The crestal mountains around the median valleys of slow-spreading ridges are typically 500–1000m lower at spreading discontinuities. Around Thetis Deep, the similar pattern in the gravity field to those of slow-spreading ridges suggests that the crestal mountains may variably block or impede flowage of evaporites towards the spreading centre, whereas the discontinuities may mark areas where flowage is unobstructed. Limited multibeam data collected in transits outside Thetis Deep show oblique fabrics as expected from these predicted movements.