Rifted continental margins host Earth’s most voluminous sediment accumulations that preserve invaluable records of basin evolution and environmental history. Yet imaging their deep architecture remains a challenge due to seismic attenuation and overprinting by successive deformation phases. The Levant Basin, a long-lived Tethyan remnant formed during the breakup of Gondwana, preserves a continuous >15 km thick sedimentary record spanning over 250 Myr. This study synthesizes regional seismic interpretations and well data to investigate the role of tectonic inheritance, subsidence, and sediment supply on depocenter evolution.
To overcome imaging limitations, we applied low-pass post-stack filtering to 2D seismic reflection surveys across the Israeli offshore. This improved the resolution of deep reflectors, enabling the differentiation of units obscured in conventional industry-processed data. Based on thickness analysis, we identify the syn-rift to post rift transition, which we tie to a well-dated horizon. We provide a concrete age constraint of pre-163 Ma (end-Callovian) for the cessation of rifting, resolving prior debates. Furthermore, our results indicate that offshore rifting occurred in at least two distinct phases—Permian-Triassic and Early-Mid Jurassic—aligning with extensional episodes documented onshore.
Analysis of 11-thickness maps showcase the 250 Myr evolution of sedimentary filling, opening a discussion about the parameters that controlled depocenter migration in relation to tectonic subsidence and sediment supply. We differentiate between episodes dominated by proximal margin sedimentation and those characterized by distal deep-basin accumulation. We explain these variations in light of sediment sources in surrounding continents and paths of transport. Marginal accumulation periods (syn-rift, early post-rift, and Plio-Quaternary) represent dominance of shallow biogenic and nearby terrestrial (siliciclastic) sources, whereas, deep basin accumulation periods represent sediment supply that was either provided from the water column (pelagic micro- and nano-fossils, Santonian–Mid-Eocene), or transported mostly from Africa with minimal accumulation along the Levant margin (during the Late Eocene–Miocene).