Arabian plate

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Arabian Plate is a tectonic plate It is bounded from the northwest by a left-lateral transform fault boundary, called the Dead Sea Rift, that extends from the northern end of the Red Sea to the Taurus Mountains in southern Turkey through the Dead Sea.

Formation of Arabian Plate[change | change source]

The Arabian Plate is a big piece of the Earth's crust. It's surrounded by different types of boundaries where the plates meet: they can move apart, come together, or slide past each other. The biggest part of this plate is the Arabian Peninsula, which is why it's called the Arabian Plate. It's bordered by the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden in the west and south, and these areas are larger parts of the plate. On the east and north sides, there are mountains in Iran and Turkey that mark where the Arabian Plate meets other plates. These mountains are made when plates crash into each other. There are also big cracks in the Earth's surface, like the Dead Sea Rift and the Owen Fault, which show where the plate is splitting apart or sliding past. The Arabian Plate is moving in a northeasterly direction between these cracks, which causes things like the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden to get wider and mountains to form. Most earthquakes in this area happen near these boundaries. In Saudi Arabia, there are different types of rocks covering the land, with volcanic rocks in the western part where cities like Mecca and Medina are. There are also lots of cracks and folds in the Earth's surface in this region, especially in the west. Some researchers think that these cracks might connect to the ones in the Red Sea.[1]


  1. "Arabian Plate". African/Arabian Tectonic Plates. Retrieved 2024-05-08.