Evolution of the northern tip of Afar triangle: Inferences from the Quaternary succession of the Dandiero - Massawa area (Eritrea)

The Dandiero Basin is controlled by two main roughly NNW-SSE trending, east dipping normal faults. The westernmost fault delimits the basins from the plateau, whereas the easternmost marks the limit between the basin succession and the Late Pleistocene Samoti Plain. We infer that the NNW-trending faults were progressively activated as a consequence of the Danakil Block counter clockwise rotation and were superimposed to the N-S trending faults that delimited the basin at the time of its inception as a marginal graben roughly aligned to the Eritrean-Ethiopian plateau. The timing of deformation (1.2 Ma up to Present) is well constrained by the age of syntectonic sediments of the Dandiero Basin and volcanic products of the Alid Volcano. These relations allowed us to refine the timing and evolution of this sector of Afar and giving some insights on the geodynamics of the area.