The buried Afiq Canyon (eastern Mediterranean, Israel): a case study of a Tertiary submarine canyon exposed in Late Messinian times

Salt tectonics off northern Israel

“…Druckmann et al (1995) showed that the sea level in the Mediterranean had dropped about 800-1300 m. A recent reevaluation suggested that the evaporites were not of shallow water origin (Hardie and Lowenstein, 2004). The huge masses of salt imply that the Mediterranean Sea cannot have been completely isolated from the Atlantic Ocean but that certain amounts of saltwater must have seeped continuously into the basin.…”

The internal grabens of the Levant Rifts and their geodynamic significance

“…The paleogeographic and geological data indicate that several of the rivers that transected the region during the Oligo-Miocene became defunct due to the incipient structural development of the rift and its elevated flanks in the Late Miocene, but the rivers that persisted to flow in between the emerging grabens during the Messinian and the Early Pliocene were reconfigured by the Mediterranean draw-down, so that their channels deepened considerably. Druckman et al (1995) discerned two Late Miocene canyons, one of them 10 km wide and 1 km deep, crossing the present southern coastal plain of Israel. The occurrence of Messinian evaporitic sediments inside these canyons established their age and their correlation with the Messinian desiccation of the Mediterranean Sea.…”

“…Incipient grabens started to develop concurrently in the present domains of the Gulf of Elat, the Dead Sea, the Sea of Galilee and Lebanon, interrupting with the flow of some of the rivers, but rivers that flowed in between the emerging grabens and their rising flanks continued to supply sediments to the Levant Basin. The few rivers that kept flowing during the Messinian desiccation of the Mediterranean Sea incised deep canyons into their thalwegs due to the marine draw-down, and their erosional capacity, like that of the Nile, was greatly enhanced (e.g., Chumakov, 1973;Druckman et al, 1995;Mart and Ryan, 2008;Ryan and Cita, 1978). These entrenched canyons became deep fjords as the Mediterranean was reconnected to the Atlantic Ocean in the Early Pliocene, and seawater reached the emerging grabens of the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee.…”

“…Evidence that some of the large Hazeva rivers continued to flow during the Late Miocene and even the Early Pliocene was discovered in the coastal plain of southern Israel, where Druckman et al (1995) encountered the Afiq and Ashdod deep canyons, that were incised into their thalwegs during the Messinian draw-down, and the Afiq defunct valley is nearly 10 km wide and 1 km deep. An isochron map of the Pliocene-to-recent interval shows that both Afiq and Ashdod rivers continued to carry sediments in the Early Pliocene, as well as the predecessor stream of the present Dalia Valley in northern Israel (Fig.…”

“…Abundant deposits of coarse conglomerates and sandstones (e.g., Buchbinder et al, 2005) and geological proof of buried deep canyons (Druckman et al, 1995) are evidence of these rivers, known in Israel as Hazeva Group. Since the general trend of the rivers was from east to west, and the oriental of the rift system is south to north, it is hard to imagine the cooccurrence of these two systems.…”