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The South Marmara Fault

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Abstract

We use about 800 km of multichannel exploration seismic reflection profiles of the seventies as well as the results of three drill holes that penetrated the sedimentary cover down to the Upper Cretaceous basement to describe a continuous gently curvilinear, south-concave zone of deformation about 10 km wide that extended over the whole southern shelf of the Sea of Marmara from the Gulf of Gemlik to the Dardanelles Straits in Lower Pliocene time, about 4 Ma. We call this zone of deformation the South Marmara Fault (SMF) system and propose that the SMF was then a branch of the dextral North Anatolian Fault. This branch passed to the north of the Marmara Island Eocene block and thus had a south-facing concavity. This curvature resulted in a significant component of shortening in the western part of the fault. The SMF was deactivated at the end of Lower Pliocene, about 3.5 Ma, except for its easternmost branch between the Gulf of Gemlik and İmralı Island where about 5 mm/year of dextral motion is still occurring today.

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Acknowledgments

This project was initiated in October 2003 during a visit by Xavier Le Pichon and Caner İmren to TPAO in Ankara. We thank TPAO for access to seismic lines shot on the southern shelf of the Sea of Marmara in 1974 and 1975 and to the reports of drill holes Marmara 1, Doluca 1, and Işıklar 1. We thank N. Çağatay and M. Sakınç for important information and advice concerning the stratigraphy of boreholes; we thank P. Henry, C. Grall, and members of the Collège de France team for valuable discussion. We thank Erdin Bozkurt and Bernard Mercier de Lépinay for their useful reviews.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Collège de France, Aix en Provence, France

    Xavier Le Pichon & Claude Rangin

  2. Avrasya Yerbilimleri Enstitüsü, Ayazağa, İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi, 34469, Istanbul, Turkey

    Caner İmren & A. M. Celâl Şengör

  3. Turkish Petroleum Corporation (TPAO), Ankara, Turkey

    Muzaffer Siyako

Authors
  1. Xavier Le Pichon
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  2. Caner İmren
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  3. Claude Rangin
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  4. A. M. Celâl Şengör
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  5. Muzaffer Siyako
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Correspondence to A. M. Celâl Şengör.

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Le Pichon, X., İmren, C., Rangin, C. et al. The South Marmara Fault. Int J Earth Sci (Geol Rundsch) 103, 219–231 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00531-013-0950-0

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