Abstract
Geomorphic mapping from LANDSAT-MSS images of the Western Desert of Egypt reveals giant flutes sculptured in Eocene limestone plateaus in one large field (225 × 125 km) and one smaller field (60 × 40 km). Plan form and dimensions, distribution, and orientation of the flutes suggest catastrophic flood erosion. In the larger field, several of the flutes coincide with previously mapped outcrops of Cenozoic gravels of an inferred fluvial origin, which lends support to the flood hypothesis, although gravel lithology does not indicate a unique source. The age of the flutes is confined between the end-Miocene cutting of the Nile canyon, which truncates the larger field, and the end-Oligocene drainage west and northwest across Egypt from the Red Sea uplift, a trend transected by and, therefore, older than the larger flute field. A Miocene age (24− ∼ 7 Ma) is proposed. Catastrophic flooding would likely have originated in erosional and/or tectonic release of tectonically dammed or reversed drainage to the south (perhaps far south) of the larger flute field at 27°N.
Published Version
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