What is the Gibraltar Arc?
The Gibraltar Arc is a geological region, considered one of the most narrowest landforms on Earth. A team of Andalusian scientists, led by the University of Granada (UGR), has been able to reconstruct for the first time what the Gibraltar Arc was like 9 million years ago. The researchers have been able to prove that, since then, large blocks of land, with sizes about 300 kilometres long and 150 kilometres wide, have rotated clockwise (in the case of the Baetic System mountain range) and counter-clockwise (in the case of the Rif mountain range, in the north of Morocco).
The said movements have completely reshaped the Gibraltar Arc, since they have been carried out at a very high speed: 6° per million years (in total, 53° for the block of the Western Baetic System), and are compatible with both the opening of the Strait of Gibraltar about 5 million years ago as with the current movements measured with GPS. Their research culminates with a reconstruction of the Gibraltar Arc 9 million years ago — at a key moment in the tectonic history of the collision between Africa and Iberia, shortly before the closure of the connection between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, and when the Gibraltar Arc was situated more to the East than at present.
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