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Arabian Plate
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Arabian Plate is a largely continental tectonic plate covering the Arabian peninsula and extending northward to Turkey. The plate borders are:
- East, with the Indo-Australian Plate
- South, with the African Plate to the west and the Indo-Australian Plate to the east
- West, divergent boundary with the African Plate forming the northern part of the Great Rift Valley and the Red Sea rift zone.
- North, complex convergent boundary with the Anatolian Plate, Eurasian Plate and Iranian Plate.
The Arabian Plate was part of the African plate during much of the Phanerozoic Eon (Paleozoic - Cenozoic), until the Oligocene Epoch of the Cenozoic Era. Red Sea rifting began in the Eocene, but the separation of Africa and Arabia occurred in the Oligocene, and since then the Arabian Plate has been slowly moving toward the Eurasian Plate.
