Kurkar

Kurkar (Arabic: كركار‎ /Hebrew: כורכר‎) is the term used in Palestinian Arabic and modern Hebrew for the rock type of which lithified sea sand dunes consist. The equivalent term used in Lebanon is ramleh. Kurkar is the regional name for an aeolian quartz sandstone with carbonate cement, in other words an eolianite or a calcarenite (calcareous sandstone or grainstone), found on the Levantine coast of the Mediterranean Sea in Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, the Gaza Strip and northern Sinai Peninsula. The kurkar ridges are prevalent on Israel's coast from the area of Tel Aviv northwards. South of Mount Carmel they form parallel alignments, the result of transgressive coastlines. Kurkar is the product of windblown quartzitic sands which created dunes during the Pleistocene, whose sand became cemented by carbonates which transformed it into sandstone (lithification process), giving birth to successive ridges along the shore. Kurkar occurs on the shore as well as under the current sea level, on the continental shelf. There are three underwater sandstone ridges off the coast of Israel and two on land. The younger kurkar formations also build small islands or islets along the coast of Israel, Lebanon (at Sidon and near Tripoli), and Syria (Arwad). In the Gaza Strip, coastal plain kurkar deposits of medium to coarse-grained calcareous sandstone are characterized by crossbedding.