Ridges of salt found offshore Egypt and, in the central Red Sea, evidence of small landslides

What is it about?

We used images of sedimentary layers of Pliocene and Pleistocene age to work out how sediments originating from land (partly wind-blown dust, partly from ephemeral rivers) and the skeletons of pelagic organisms have accumulated within the Red Sea. We also studied structures within them, which reveal how the underlying evaporites ("salt") have deformed and been eroded, as well as landslides.

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Why is it important?

The central Red Sea landslides are very localised. Based on strengths of similar sediments, we suspect these imply they were triggered by a local earthquake (we estimate it was magnitude 4.5). There is surprisingly little seismicity in the norther Red Sea (see my other article), but this result suggests we may be able to use sedimentary landslides as indicators of earlier earthquakes.