Sediment Routing Systems of the Eastern Red Sea Rifted Margin

We investigate the sediment routing systems of the eastern Red Sea rifted margin by constraining the sediment accumulation history of the offshore depositional domain from regional seismic sections, wells, and outcrops observations and comparing it to the denudation history of the onshore erosional domain (Arabian Shield - Delaunay et al. (2024, submitted in this issue). We show that the rift (28–16 Ma) was segmented into a northern high-relief segment (28°N-21.5°N) under marine depositional environments and a southern low-relief magmatic segment (21.5°N-13°N) under continental depositional environments. The late syn-rift (Transition period - 16-14 Ma) was associated with a decrease in the magmatic and tectonic activity of the rifted margins, marine flooding of the entire basin, and the onset of the evaporitic sequence resulting from partial isolation from the global ocean. During the early post-rift (14–5 Ma), the southern segment underwent an uplift and a significant increase of the siliciclastic accumulation (15 fold), suggesting a rapid retreat of the escarpment initially corresponding to the former rift shoulder. During the late post-rift (5–0 Ma) the siliciclastic accumulation dropped and carbonate sedimentation returned suggesting a shift towards arid climatic conditions and a slowdown in the retreat of the onshore escarpment.