High-Resolution Neogene and Quaternary Estimates of Nubia-Eurasia-North America Plate Motion

demets, c. ; iaffaldano, g. ; merkouriev, s.;

Reconstructions of the history of convergence between the Nubia and Eurasia plates constitute an important part of a broader framework for understanding deformation in the Mediterranean region and the closing of the Mediterranean Basin. Herein, we combine high-resolution reconstructions of Eurasia-North America and Nubia-North America Plate motions to determine rotations that describe Nubia-Eurasia Plate motion at ∼1 Myr intervals for the past 20 Myr. We apply trans-dimensional hierarchical Bayesian inference to the Eurasia-North America and Nubia-North America rotation sequences in order to reduce noise in the newly estimated Nubia-Eurasia rotations. The noise-reduced rotation sequences for the Eurasia-North America and Nubia-North America Plate pairs describe remarkably similar kinematic histories since 20 Ma, consisting of relatively steady seafloor spreading from 20 to 8Ma, ∼20 per cent opening-rate slowdowns at 8–6.5Ma, and steady plate motion from ∼7Ma to the present. Our
newly estimated Nubia-Eurasia rotations predict that convergence across the central Mediterranean Sea slowed by ∼50 per cent and rotated anticlockwise after ∼25 Ma until 13 Ma. Motion since 13 Ma has remained relatively steady. An absence of evidence for a significant
change in motion immediately before or during the Messinian Salinity Crisis at 6.3–5.6 Ma argues against a change in plate motion as its causative factor. The detachment of the Arabian Peninsula from Africa at 30–24 Ma may have triggered the convergence rate slowdown before 13Ma; however, published reconstructions of Nubia-Eurasia motion for times before 20 Ma are too widely spaced to determine with confidence whether the two are correlated. A significant discrepancy between our new estimates of Nubia-Eurasia motion during the past
few Myr and geodetic estimates calls for further investigation.