The Death Throes of the Tethys Seaway and the Birth Pangs of the Red Sea: The Geodynamics of the Levant

As the Tethys Seaway closed in the tectonic domain of the Levant, it left behind two branches. The continental collision occurs in the eastern branch along the Bitlis–Zagros suture. Subduction still prevails along the western branch between the Anatolia–Balkan sections of Eurasia, where the last remnant of the Tethyan maritime domain persists. It seems that differences in the northward plate motion of Arabia as its convergence with Iran–Anatolia gradually changed from subduction to collision took place, leading to the break up of the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. Concurrently, the subduction along the Hellenic convergence in the west was associated with extensive rollback that broke up the Aegean Sea as its back-arc basin, and the rollback of the deformation front dragged Anatolia westward. It seems that the closure of Tethys Seaway led to the emergence of the Aegean Sea, the Red Sea, and the Gulf of Aden.