Reply to Comment of Y. Kolodny, A. Burg and A. Sneh on “Combustion metamorphism in the Nabi Musa dome: new implications for a mud volcano origin of the Mottled Zone, Dead Sea area”, by E. Sokol, I. Novikov, S. Zateeva, Ye. Vapnik, R. Shagam and O. Kozmenko, Basin Research (2010), 22, 414‐438

Abstract

The dominating paradigm for most Israeli and Jordanian geologists relates to the genesis of the Mottled Zone (MZ) to the surface combustion of bituminous chalk with common organic content below 15 wt.%. Our hypothesis (Sokol et al., 2007, 2008) also suggests the pyrometamorphic process but we assert matter and hydrocarbon gas flow from the deep stratum and methane surface and subsurface combustion. Kolodny et al. (2012) state that there is hardly anything that could have been done with the MZ rocks and was not done (last published paper Gur et al., 1995; and last published remake Burg et al., 1999). Nevertheless, our new findings are reported in numerous publications (Sharygin et al., 2006, 2011; Vapnik & Sokol, 2006; Vapnik et al., 2006, 2007; Sokol et al., 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012; Khesin et al., 2010a,b; Murashko et al., 2010; Galuskin et al., 2012; Galuskina et al., 2012; Seryotkin et al., 2012; Vapnik & Vardi, 2012).