Member's feedback session

13 May 2015

Our annual member's feedback session to the group. As normal it consisted of a number of short presentations on what the group has been doing, and the opportunity to question the committee.  There were five presentations, namely:

• Geoff Carver on our trip to Cyprus
• Roger Smiths on the flowers of Cyprus
• Christopher Wright with a review of the fossil group's progress throughout the year
• Mary Geffen with a review of the maps groups progress
• Dick Harris on a review of the Plate Tectonics group situation

Cyprus talk

A short summary of Geoff's talk on Cyprus is given below.

Geoff Carver led us through the complexities of the geological history of Cyprus. Mixing erudition with humour, he managed to present this difficult subject in a digestible way.

The story started with the break up of the super continent of Gondwana and the subsequent northwards movement of the African plate to eliminate the Tethyan ocean and collide with the Eurasian plate.

This enormous energy release resulted in the building of the alps as well as the birth of the Mediterranean sea. In the east of this sea, a subduction zone led to some volcanism, but more particularly to uplift. In Cyprus, the uplift was dramatically revealed as the Ophiolite sequence. Starting from sea level, and moving up the Troodos range this full sequence of oceanic rocks can be viewed with relative ease. The sequence being:

Chalk and limestone

Pillow lavas

Sheeted dykes

Gabbros

Harzburgite

Dunite (with some alteration to Serpentenite)

Cyprus is a mineral rich microplate and has been exploited since the Bronze Age for its copper. Later miners removed cadmium and asbestos. The economic benefits resulted in another richness – the archaeological record.

Start of the Ophiolite sequence with Cretaceous chalks and with the Troodos massif in the background

Earthquake damaged stone trough