Mesozoic and Cenozoic sedimentary cover dynamics in strike-slip salt and clay tectonics in the eastern Sahel Tunisian margin (North African plate)

Mesozoic and Cenozoic sedimentary cover structures and dynamics, in Eastern Tunisia Sahel margin, represent an example of platforms and basins mosaic evolution that was guided by thick-skinned tectonics; characterized by strike-slip deep-rooted Flower structure fault corridors. The latter are accompanied in the central and the western part of the margin by Upper Triassic salt halokinesis, that is replaced in the eastern side of the margin by Neogene claykinesis. Integrated approach combining well log lithostratigraphy identification and correlations, paleogeography, geodynamics and seismic sequence stratigraphy analyses, highlighted the platform to basin sedimentary infilling and structuring. Strike-slip Flower structure fault corridors reactivated successively by Mesozoic Tethyan rift and Cenozoic Pyrenean and Atlassic compressions, create respectively pull apart platforms and basins mosaic; folded in anticlines and synclines as foreland basins. As result of this geodynamics, sedimentary cover infilling dynamics and evolution are characterized by space-time lateral and vertical thicknesses and facies variations, inversions, unconformities and rotational subsidence migrations. These cover characteristics are controlled by strike-slip faults kinematics, Triassic salt creep and Neogene claykinesis. These results explain the platform to basin sedimentary cover anomalies in this tectonic context. •Seismic Sequence stratigraphy of sedimentary cover.•Paleogeographic and Sequence System Tracts distribution.•Thick-skinned salt and clay transcurrent tectonics.•Basins and platforms mosaic kinematics.•Rotational subsidence migrations.