The Forgotten Rivers of the Late Miocene Levant Basin: Implications for Sediment Provenance and Trap Timing

Summary We build on the recent discovery of a previously unidentified and vast upper Messinian fluvial deposit in the Levant Basin. The basin-wide accumulation, which is situated offshore Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel, lies directly over deep-basin evaporites and related erosional surfaces, and documents a formerly unknown transport direction (towards the southwest) and drainage basin (in southern Turkey and western Syria). Because the deposit is presumed to have been sourced from the Anatolian, African, and Arabian plates, we use its three-dimensional morphology to time margin deformation, and focus particularly on structures associated with the Cyprus Arc/Latakia Ridge collision zone. From thickness trends and cross-cutting relationships, we show that during the terminal phase of its development, the accumulation was diverted northward, behind an emerging Latakia Ridge. This large-scale control on riverine avulsion, which is rarely attributed to processes associated with plate-margin deformation, highlights the importance of discerning active deformation during deposition, particularly in complex structural zones. Our results have direct implications for exploration, and provide new insight into potential reservoir presence and quality, trap formation, and structural pathways in the Eastern Mediterranean.