View article

The onset of the Dead Sea transform has recently been reevaluated by U-Pb age-strain analyses of fault-related calcite taken from several fault strands along its main 500-km-long sector. The results suggest that the relative motion between Africa and Arabia north of the Red Sea was transferred northward to the Dead Sea transform as early as 20 Ma and along a ~10-km-wide deformation zone that formed the central rift with contemporaneous bounding sinistral motion. The Gishron fault is the western bounding fault with normal and sinistral fault offsets that placed Proterozoic crystalline rocks and a cover of Cambrian sandstones in fault contact with Cretaceous-Eocene carbonates. Fault-related calcite veins are common in the Gishron fault zone, and we report the results of a detailed study of one sample with nine calcite fillings. Low fluid inclusion entrapment temperatures <50 °C, stable isotopes values of–3.3 …