Basalts, basalts and yet more basalts

摘要

To a mere palaeontologist, most basalts look seriously alike, unless they are porphyritic with feldspars clearly visible to the naked eye. How then can one split up the huge piles they tend to build up in Oregon, or that greatest of all sequences, the Deccan Traps? Not quite on that scale, there are impressive thicknesses extending from Saudi Arabia into Jordan, converging upon the Dead Sea Rift which, subdivided, could throw valuable light upon the dates of movement along that great fracture belt. This results from a collaborative study by a team of geologists from the Natural Resources Authority of Jordan and the Geological Survey of Israel (Tarawneh, K. and others, Dating of the Harrat Ash Shaam Basalts, Northeast Jordan (Phase 1), Report GS1/1/2000, Natural Resources Authority Jordan/Geological Survey of Israel.