Did Yemeni Tertiary granites intrude neck zones of a stretched continental upper crust?

We demonstrate that the Miocene alkali granites of Yemen which emplaced along the Great Escarpment are contemporaneous with the stretching of the southern Red Sea continental crust. There is a gradient of Miocene extension towards the granites as well as a change of the geometry of tilted blocks around them. Geometrically, most of these granites seem to be emplaced passively in the necked areas of a stretched continental crust. These necked areas correspond to previous syn‐plume Oligocene NNW–SSE to N–S trending areas of localized extension marked by basaltic dyke swarms. These early extensional areas were associated with the emplacement of the flood basalt volcanic pile and were probably localized over large basement discontinuities.