Rates of Holocene folding in the coastal Zagros near Bandar Abbas, Iran

Abstract

FOR the study of recent crustal processes, seismological and geodetic surveys need to be complemented by measurements of Earth movements over periods long enough for secular trends to emerge¹. The one such item available for the Zagros was obtained in 1952, when Lees and Falcon used archaeological remains to trace the growth over the past 1,700 yr of the Shaur anticline near the head of the Persian Gulf². Lees and Falcon also observed that recent marine terraces on the shores of the Gulf had been deformed by anticlinal growth²: I report here preliminary ¹⁴C dates on shells from fossil beach deposits associated with three fold structures on the eastern Zagros coast of Iran near Bandar Abbas, and derive Holocene deformation rates from them. The results, though not necessarily applicable to other parts of the folded belt, are compatible with estimates of the current rate of rotation of Arabia, to whose northeasterly drive the Zagros Range has been ascribed³.