Uplift history by fission-track analysis. Order from chaos at a young rifted margin, northern Eastern Desert, Egypt

Abstract

The western side of the Gulf of Suez, a Neogene rift basin, is characterized by basement uplifts. Timing, amount and geometry of rift-related uplift is crucial to the understanding of the thermal evolution of the rift and for placing constraints on geophysical models of rift genesis. Fifty-five apatite fission-track dates from basement rocks along the Gulf of Suez-Red Sea margin in the northern Eastern Desert fall in the range of ca. 11-382 Ma. Older dates often occur within very close geographic proximity to younger ones. Furthermore, dates show no clear correlation with elevation or distance from the rift margin. On the basis of apatite dates and their length distributions, data fall into ..