The Syrian Arc fold belt, extending ~1,000 km from Syria to Egypt, represents one of the most remarkable examples of a well-preserved intraplate inversion structure. This compressional fold belt follows the northeastern African passive margin and has developed since the Late Cretaceous and through most of the Cenozoic. During that time, the Tethys Ocean was closing as the African Plate was subducted beneath the Eurasian Plate. Despite extensive study, the underlying mechanisms and forces responsible for arc formation remain poorly understood. A long-standing geodynamic paradox exists: the compressional arc has developed within the trailing part of the African subducting plate, where slab-pull–induced extension, rather than compression, should have dominated the stress regime.
Newly published high-resolution structural and temporal data from the Hatira anticline, located in the central Syrian Arc, along with recent advances in plate-kinematic reconstructions, now provide an opportunity to re-examine this geodynamic conundrum. The Hatira record reveals that episodic shortening events punctuated a prolonged, slow shortening spanning ~40 million years. The primary shortening pulse, occurring around 79 Ma (documented within the Mishash Formation), temporally coincided with an abrupt slowdown in Africa-Eurasia plate motion and the demise of a double subduction system in the eastern Tethys Ocean. These relationships suggest that the Syrian Arc may have evolved in direct response to dynamic processes acting along the subducting system - such as double subduction zone formation and demise, slab stagnation, and buckling. We will present the state of the art of the problem and our approach for modeling this system.