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Department of Mineralogy, Natural History Museum, London SW7 5BD, UK cvitafinzi{at}hotmail.com
The Holocene record on the coasts of the Arabian Sea provides information on the nature and rate of deformation generated by the interaction between the Indian, Arabian and Eurasian Plates. Holocene marine terraces show that the southern Makran has been subject to the infrequent but vigorous coseismic uplift (
2 m) that characterizes other subduction settings and they indicate landward rotation of the imbricate faults among which shortening is distributed. The lack of significant Holocene deformation on the SE coast of the Arabian peninsula is consistent with its position parallel to a transform, although there is evidence for large-scale buckling driven by convergence at the Strait of Hormuz in the NE. Geomorphological and tide-gauge evidence for localized uplift on the southwestern coast of India may represent compressional buckling here too in response to Himalayan collision. Bathymetric and geodetic data can help to bridge these sequences and thus enhance their value for quantifying plate rheology and dynamics, notably by linking variations in plate-margin displacement with major sea-floor strike-slip structures and by eventually confirming transitory as well as sustained compressive buckling on land.
