The Medina Wrench: a key to the kinematics of the central and eastern Mediterranean over the past 5 Ma
Jongsma, D.; Woodside, J.M.; King, G.C.P.; van Hinte, J.E. (1987). The Medina Wrench: a key to the kinematics of the central and eastern Mediterranean over the past 5 Ma. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 82(1): 87-106
In: Earth and Planetary Science Letters. Elsevier: Amsterdam. ISSN 0012-821X; e-ISSN 1385-013X, more
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| Keywords |
Earth sciences > Geophysics > Tectonophysics
Geological structures > Faults > Transform faults
Paleomagnetism
Plate boundaries
Plate motion
Marine/Coastal |
| Authors | | Top |
- Jongsma, D.
- Woodside, J.M.
- King, G.C.P.
- van Hinte, J.E.
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| Abstract |
The Medina Wrench in the central Mediterranean is a transform fault connecting the plate collision in northwest Africa and northern Sicily with that occurring at the Aegean plate boundary, south of Greece. The more than 800 km long crescent-shaped wrench zone is currently seismically quiet but exhibits major deformation since 5 Ma within a belt 30-100 km wide. It forms the southern boundary of two microplates moving eastward with respect to Africa and Europe. A simple plate rotation model constrained by recent paleomagnetic data indicates that a continental Iblean microplate and a hybrid continental/oceanic Ionian microplate, separated along the Malta Escarpment, have rotated anticlockwise by 11° and 12° , respectively, around poles in southern Italy. Relative motion between microplates in a collision zone may be as much as 6 times faster than convergence between the major plates which spawned them, and they can be considered rigid to the first order over the time span involved. |
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