Sorbas Basin
The Sorbas Basin is a sedimentary basin around the town of Sorbas in Almeria Province in south-east Spain. It is believed to have been formed by extension, between two fault-bounded blocks which rotated anti-clockwise to take up the compression resulting from Europe's collision with Africa. The basin is filled with turbidites and evaporites of the Tortonian-Messinian ages of the Miocene Epoch.
It is a matter of some debate whether the basin dried out at the same time as the main Mediterranean basins.
Basin fill
The basin is divided into the following members:- At the bottom of the image, the house is constructed on the steep yellow cliffs of the resistant Azagador Member.
- The lower and upper Abad Marls, a Tortonian/Messinian series of turbidites featuring pronounced Milankovic cyclicity, allowing chronostratigraphic dating; these fine muds are easily eroded.
- When the sea returned overdeepening the basin, salt water waterfalls eroded a 200 m depression patterned by 30 m deep gullies.
- the Messinian Yesares Member, a gypsum evaporite, forms the steep bluffs at the top of the valley; there is some debate about how conformable its contact with the Abad marls is.
- Pliocene deposits, rest unconformably on the top.
- Complexity of drawdown and reflooding complicate correlation of the ‘Salinity Crisis' stratigraphy.
Basin significance