ABSTRACT
Landsat Thematic Mapper images and stereoscopic aerial and Shuttle-borne Large Format Camera photographs, together with limited field traverses allow the identification and analysis of major faults associated with early Red Sea rifting and uplift, and with neotectonics in northern Eritrea. Eritrea is founded on Precambrian crystalline basement mantled in the interior by thin early Mesozoic sandstones, an undated lateritic palaeosol and Miocene flood basalts. Phanerozoic cover is found in outliers at various elevations revealing late-Tertiary uplift patterns. There are few easy means of distinguishing Red Sea related faults from older structures in Eritrea because of the parallelism of the basement "grain" with the primary direction of Red Sea rifting. The principal datum that allows recognition of Tertiary displacements is the lateritic palaeosol at the base of the Miocene flood basalts, because lateritisation is the result of prolonged tropical-humid weathering on extensive, low-relief planation surfaces.
