What caused the pull apart basins in the Red Sea fault zone that filled with water to create the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee?
The Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee formed along the trace of a strik-slip fault system that extends from the Gulf of Aqaba along the Jordan Valley well into Syria. faultssystcharacterised by pull-apart sy
Ctnd: strike slip faults are never planar and at the irregularities in the fault trace one gets pull apart basins ( ie. extension > eg Dead Sea) or alternatively compression (> Golan Heights)
Both the sea itself and the entire Dead Sea valley in which it lies are the result of north-south motion at the boundary between two tectonic plates’ two parcels of the Earth's rocky crust. A component of extension is also present in the southern part of the transform, which has contributed to a series of depressions, or pull-apart basins, forming the Gulf of Aqaba, Dead Sea, Sea of Galilee, and Hula basins. Like California's San Andreas Fault, the Dead Sea fault is a transform plate boundary, along which two tectonic plates slide past one another. It separates the Arabia plate from the Africa plate The Dead Sea is formed in a pull-apart basin due to the left-stepping offset between the Wadi Arabah and Jordan Valley segments. The part of the basin with a sedimentary fill of more than 2 km is 150 km long and 15–17 km wide in its central part. Mathematical simulation of the plate motion and faulting process suggests that the Dead Sea rift was created as a result of a simultaneous propagation of two different transforms. One propagated from the Red Sea through the Gulf of Elat to the north. The African Plate rotates counterclockwise while the Arabian Plate moves roughly northward. As they move apart, faults form in the graben and pieces of crust sink into the mantle. About 3 million years ago, water filled the graben, forming the Dead Sea, which was then part of a long bay of the Mediterranean Sea. The Dead Sea transform fault connects the Red Sea rifting system in the south and the east Anatolian Fault in the North. The investigated area is offset by NW and N striking faults. The Red Sea Rift was formed by the divergence between the African Plate and the Arabian Plate. The rift transitioned from a continental rift to an oceanic rift. Magnetic anomalies suggest that the spreading rate on either side of the Red Sea is about 1 cm/year. The common model of the Dead Sea Basin, which describes its structure, is of a pull-apart basin, where the Jericho and Arava faults border it on the west and east, respectively. The Red Sea is the saltiest sea of all the seas that connect to the ocean without even one river meeting the sea. A popular hypotheses about the origins of the Red Sea's name is that it contains a cyanobacteria called Trichodesmium erythraeum, which turns the normally blue-green water a reddish-brown.
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