The Cyprus Arc is a part of the plate boundary zone that accommodates the motion of the African plate relative to the Anatolian plate. It is an arcuate depression located in the southern reaches of Cyprus. The Cyprus Arc is considered to be in collision between the African and Eurasian plates. [1] The arc is linked into the Latakia Ridge to the west via the East Anatolian Fault (EAF). [2]
The Paleogene Period is a geologic period and system that spans 43 million years from the end of the Cretaceous Period 66 Ma to the beginning of the Neogene Period 23.03 Ma. It is the first period of the Cenozoic Era, the tenth period of the Phanerozoic and is divided into the Paleocene, Eocene, and Oligocene epochs. The earlier term Tertiary Period was used to define the time now covered by the Paleogene Period and subsequent Neogene Period; despite no longer being recognized as a formal stratigraphic term, "Tertiary" still sometimes remains in informal use. Paleogene is often abbreviated "Pg", although the United States Geological Survey uses the abbreviation "Pe" for the Paleogene on the Survey's geologic maps.
Obduction is a geological process whereby denser oceanic crust is scraped off a descending ocean plate at a convergent plate boundary and thrust on top of an adjacent plate. When oceanic and continental plates converge, normally the denser oceanic crust sinks under the continental crust in the process of subduction. Obduction, which is less common, normally occurs in plate collisions at orogenic belts or back-arc basins.
An ophiolite is a section of Earth's oceanic crust and the underlying upper mantle that has been uplifted and exposed, and often emplaced onto continental crustal rocks.
Tectonics are the processes that result in the structure and properties of the Earth's crust and its evolution through time. The field of planetary tectonics extends the concept to other planets and moons.
The Eurasian plate is a tectonic plate that includes most of the continent of Eurasia, with the notable exceptions of the Indian subcontinent, the Arabian subcontinent and the area east of the Chersky Range in eastern Siberia. It also includes oceanic crust extending westward to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and northward to the Gakkel Ridge.
The African plate, also known as the Nubian plate, is a major tectonic plate that includes much of the continent of Africa and the adjacent oceanic crust to the west and south. It is bounded by the North American plate and South American plate to the west ; the Arabian plate and Somali plate to the east; the Eurasian plate, Aegean Sea plate and Anatolian plate to the north; and the Antarctic plate to the south.
The Anatolian sub-plate is a continental tectonic plate that is separated from the Eurasian plate and the Arabian plate by the North Anatolian Fault and the East Anatolian Fault respectively. Most of the country of Turkey is located on the Anatolian plate. Most significant earthquakes in the region have historically occurred along the northern fault, such as the 1939 Erzincan earthquake. The devastating 2023 Turkey–Syria earthquakes occurred along the active East Anatolian Fault at a strike-slip fault where the Arabian plate is sliding past the Anatolian plate horizontally.
The geology of the Himalayas is a record of the most dramatic and visible creations of the immense mountain range formed by plate tectonic forces and sculpted by weathering and erosion. The Himalayas, which stretch over 2400 km between the Namcha Barwa syntaxis at the eastern end of the mountain range and the Nanga Parbat syntaxis at the western end, are the result of an ongoing orogeny — the collision of the continental crust of two tectonic plates, namely, the Indian Plate thrusting into the Eurasian Plate. The Himalaya-Tibet region supplies fresh water for more than one-fifth of the world population, and accounts for a quarter of the global sedimentary budget. Topographically, the belt has many superlatives: the highest rate of uplift, the highest relief, among the highest erosion rates at 2–12 mm/yr, the source of some of the greatest rivers and the highest concentration of glaciers outside of the polar regions. This last feature earned the Himalaya its name, originating from the Sanskrit for "the abode of the snow".
The Mediterranean Ridge is a wide ridge in the bed of the Mediterranean Sea, running along a rough quarter circle from Calabria, south of Crete, to the southwest corner of Turkey.
The geology of Turkey is the product of a wide variety of tectonic processes that have shaped Anatolia over millions of years, a process which continues today as evidenced by frequent earthquakes and occasional volcanic eruptions.
Cimmeria was an ancient continent, or, rather, a string of microcontinents or terranes, that rifted from Gondwana in the Southern Hemisphere and was accreted to Eurasia in the Northern Hemisphere. It consisted of parts of present-day Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tibet, China, Myanmar, Thailand, and Malaysia. Cimmeria rifted from the Gondwanan shores of the Paleo-Tethys Ocean during the Early Permian and as the Neo-Tethys Ocean opened behind it, during the Permian, the Paleo-Tethys closed in front of it. Because the different chunks of Cimmeria drifted northward at different rates, a Meso-Tethys Ocean formed between the different fragments during the Cisuralian. Cimmeria rifted off Gondwana from east to west, from Australia to the eastern Mediterranean. It stretched across several latitudes and spanned a wide range of climatic zones.
The Azores–Gibraltar Transform Fault (AGFZ), also called a fault zone and a fracture zone, is a major seismic zone in the Eastern Atlantic Ocean between the Azores and the Strait of Gibraltar. It is the product of the complex interaction between the African, Eurasian, and Iberian plates. The AGFZ produced these large-magnitude earthquakes and, consequently, a number of large tsunamis: 1755 Lisbon, 1761 Lisbon, 1816 North Atlantic, 1941 Gloria Fault earthquake, 1969 Horseshoe and 1975.
Gondwana was a large landmass, sometimes referred to as a supercontinent. The remnants of Gondwana make up around two-thirds of today's continental area, including South America, Africa, Antarctica, Australia, Zealandia, Arabia, and the Indian Subcontinent.
The Aegean Sea plate is a small tectonic plate located in the eastern Mediterranean Sea under southern Greece and western Turkey. Its southern edge is the Hellenic subduction zone south of Crete, where the African plate is being swept under the Aegean Sea plate. Its northern margin is a divergent boundary with the Eurasian plate.
Located in the western Pacific Ocean near Indonesia, the Molucca Sea Plate has been classified by scientists as a fully subducted microplate that is part of the Molucca Sea Collision Complex. The Molucca Sea Plate represents the only known example of divergent double subduction (DDS), which describes the subduction on both sides of a single oceanic plate.
The Hellenic Trench (HT) is an oceanic trough located in the forearc of the Hellenic arc, an arcuate archipelago on the southern margin of the Aegean Sea plate, or Aegean Plate, also called Aegea, the basement of the Aegean Sea. The HT begins in the Ionian Sea near the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth and curves to the south, following the margin of the Aegean Sea. It passes close to the south shore of Crete and ends near the island of Rhodes just offshore Anatolia.
The geology of Sicily records the collision of the Eurasian and the African plates during westward-dipping subduction of the African slab since late Oligocene. Major tectonic units are the Hyblean foreland, the Gela foredeep, the Apenninic-Maghrebian orogen, and the Calabrian Arc. The orogen represents a fold-thrust belt that folds Mesozoic carbonates, while a major volcanic unit is found in an eastern portion of the island. The collision of Africa and Eurasia is a retreating subduction system, such that the descending Africa is falling away from Eurasia, and Eurasia extends and fills the space as the African plate falls into the mantle, resulting in volcanic activity in Sicily and the formation of Tyrrhenian slab to the north.
The Hellenic subduction zone (HSZ) is the convergent boundary between the African plate and the Aegean Sea plate, where oceanic crust of the African is being subducted north–northeastwards beneath the Aegean. The southernmost and shallowest part of the zone is obscured beneath the deformed thick sedimentary sequence that forms the Mediterranean Ridge accretionary complex. It has a well-defined Wadati–Benioff zone of seismicity, which demonstrates the relatively shallow dip of its southern part, which increases markedly to the north of the non-volcanic part of the Hellenic arc. The descending slab has been imaged using seismic tomography down to the top of the mantle transition zone at 410 km depth.
The Latakia Ridge is a part of the plate boundary zone that accommodates the motion of the African Plate relative to the Anatolian Plate. The ridge is linked into the Cyprus arc to the east via the East Anatolian Fault (EAF).
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