Arabian Plate
Oxford Dictionary of Geography:
Top
Arabian plate
A minor lithospheric plate, currently colliding with the Iran plate. Its boundary with the Indo-Australian plate forms the Owen fracture zone.
Wikipedia on Answers.com:
Top
Arabian Plate
The Arabian plate, shown in bright yellow
The Arabian Plate is one of three tectonic plates (the African, Arabian and Indian crustal plates) which have been moving northward over millions of years and colliding with the Eurasian Plate. This is resulting in a mingling of plate pieces and mountain ranges extending in the west from the Pyrenees, crossing southern Europe and the Middle East, to the Himalayas and ranges of southeast Asia. [1]
The Arabian Plate consists mostly of the Arabian peninsula; it extends northward to Turkey. The plate borders are:
- East, with the Indo-Australian Plate, at the Owen Fracture Zone
- South, with the African Plate to the west and the Indo-Australian Plate to the east
- West, a left lateral fault boundary with the African Plate called the Dead Sea Transform (DST), and a divergent boundary with the African Plate called the Red Sea Rift which runs the length of the Red Sea;
- North, complex convergent boundary with the Anatolian Plate and Eurasian Plate.
The Arabian Plate was part of the African plate during much of the Phanerozoic Eon (Paleozoic - Cenozoic), until the Oligocene Epoch of the Cenozoic Era. Red Sea rifting began in the Eocene, but the separation of Africa and Arabia occurred in the Oligocene, and since then the Arabian Plate has been slowly moving toward the Eurasian Plate.
The collision between the Arabian Plate and Eurasia is pushing up the Zagros Mountains of Iran. Because the Arabian Plate and Eurasia plate collide, many cities are in danger such as Cairo, Egypt (which is on the Arabian Plate). These dangers include earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes.
Notes
- ^ Image Science and Analysis Laboratory, NASA-Johnson Space Center. "Tectonics of the Arabian Plate". The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. NASA. http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/handbooks/arabianpages/mainframe.htm. Retrieved 21 July 2007.
|
||||||||||||||||
 |
This tectonics article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
Post a question - any question - to the WikiAnswers community:
Copyrights:
Oxford Dictionary of Geography
A Dictionary of Geography. Copyright © Susan Mayhew 1992, 1997, 2004. All rights reserved.
Read more
