Introduction
Jordan is situated at the northwestern side of the Arabian Plate, along the eastern flank of the ancient Tethys Ocean in the western side of the Dead Sea Transform. Dead Sea Transform extends for more than 1000 km from the northern end of the Red Sea, where the crust is currently extending to the Taurus zone plate collision in Europe. Ever since the time of its formation, less than 20 my ago, the Dead Sea Transform Fault has undergone about 105 km left-lateral horizontal displacement (Freund et al., 1970; Garfunkel, 1981; Hatcher et al., 1981; Quennel, 1958; Girdler, 1985), leading to have Jordan situated at the transition zone between the stable part of the Arabian Plate and the unstable area of the Dead Sea Transform Fault. Lovelock (1984) suggested that the crust in the northwestern part of the Arabian Plate (beneath Jordan) has been fragmented into stable blocks separated by mobile zones. While the crystalline basement and sedimentary cover holds a block structure with faults to serve as blocks boundaries.
Despite of its significant geodynamic settings, the Jordan block structure and its boundaries has been subjected to limited investigation. Although several studies on the sedimentary basin of Jordan have been conducted, most of these tend to focus on the large basins such as Dead Sea, Al-Azraq, Wadi Sirhan, El Jafer and Risha Basin particularly in reference to oil exploration which were largely based on seismic investigation.
The Jordan Valley covers an area of about 700 km2, extending from the Dead Sea shores in the south to Lake of Tiberia (Sea of Galilee) in the north. It is about 105 km long and up to 20 km wide. Compared to the other basins along the Dead Sea Rift such as Gulf of Aqaba, Dead Sea, Lake of Tiberia (Sea of Galilee) and Hula basins, it is the shallowest one, having only up to 300 m of Pleistocene to Miocene sediments (Fig. 1 a and b).