Tectonic evolution of the Alboran Sea basin

The Alboran Sea is an extensional basin of Neogene age that is surrounded by highly arcuate thrust belts. Multichannel seismic (MCS) reflection profile data suggest the basin has a complex tectonic fabric that includes extensional, compressional and strike-slip structures. The early Miocene history appears to be dominated by graben formation with border faults that are in large part contemporaneous with thrust movements in the external zones of the Betic and Rif mountains. Extension appears to have continued into the late Miocene although the main movements were probably completed by the time of the Messinian ‘salinity crisis’. The Pliocene and younger history of the basin is dominated by infilling of the Messinian topography, gentle subsidence, and extensional, compressional and strike-slip movements. There is evidence from the sea-floor morphology and seismicity patterns that the basin is actively deforming in response to present-day plate motions. Backstripping of well data in the basin margin suggests that the initial extensional event was accompanied by crustal and lithospheric thinning. The depth to Moho inferred from backstripping is greater than the depth expected based on seismic and gravity modelling, suggesting that backstripping underestimates the true amount of thinning. One explanation is that some of the thinning occurred while the crust was above sea level, perhaps as a result of either crustal thickening, or a period of lithospheric heating and thinning, prior to rifting. We found that a model with a ‘normal’ crustal thickness of 31.2 km, a lithospheric thickness of 50 km, and β= 1.4 predicts 0.8 km of initial uplift. These parameters fit the well subsidence data and bring the backstripped Moho into better agreement with the seismic and gravity Moho. The origin of such a thin lithosphere is not constrained by the data, but we believe that it may be a result of the detachment of a cold lithospheric ‘root’ that formed during pre-Neogene collisional orogeny in the region.