East African rift and northeast lineaments: continental spreading—transform system?

Abstract

Seafloor spreading and transform faulting processes are also likely to be operative during continental rifting events. Continental lines of old weakness oriented at high angles to the direction of continental rifting may be reactivated by transform faulting. These older continental transform faults, which predate and accomodate the rifting, will continue to propagate as younger oceanic transform faults as the rift develops into seas and oceans. This model is applied to the East African Rift which is postulated to be a continental spreading rift that is accommodated by east-northeast continental transform lineaments that are reactivated older crustal defects of appropriate orientation. At least five continental transform lineaments can be tentatively identified by empirical best fits to oceanic transform directions of the South Atlantic Ocean and to various continental African northeast-trending structures: (1) Cape Town-Maputo (CT-LM); (2) Orange River-Beira (OR-B); (3) Luderitz-Lindi (L-Li); (4) Walvis Bay-Mombasa-Mogadishu (WB-M-Mo); and (5) Luanda-Afar (Lu-Af). As these postulated lineaments are perennial deep seated crustal defects they may also control the development of mineral deposits.