DETAILS OF DAY 5

The main aim of today is to visit some of the renowned archaeological sites on the south coast of the island. However, since there is some geological interest at one particular tourist stop, the opportunity to view briefly some lithologies of the Mamonia Terrane will be taken. Also in the vicinity are some excellent sections in the Messinian-age evaporitic sediments of the Kalavassos Formation, and we shall make a stop to examine these as we make our return back to Limassol in the late afternoon.

The day will be spent at sites along the south coast, between Limassol and Paphos.

The Mamonia Terrane is an allochthonous assemblage of Triassic to Jurassic age ocean floor volcanics and mainly pelagic sediments (the Dhiarizos Group), and an assemblage of mainly continental margin deposits, (the Ayios Photios Group) of similar age (Robertson and Woodcock, 1979). The terrane was tectonically emplaced alongside the Troodos Terrane during microplate rotation in the late Cretaceous.

During the Late Miocene major changes took place in the Neotethyan Ocean basin. In the early Messinian, sea levels in the Neotethyan Ocean dropped dramatically as the ocean basin was cut off from worldwide oceanic circulation, heralding the start of the Messinian Salinity Crisis. In the Late Cretaceous-Early Palaeogene the eastern end of the ocean basin began to lose its connection with oceans to the east as the straits between the Arabian Promontary of the African Plate and the Eurasian Plate narrowed and finally closed. Continuing Alpine convergence across the main body of the ocean culminated in tectonic uplift at the western end of the basin and the closing of the Atlantic seaway through the Straits of Gibraltar as the Betic-Rif orogenic arc developed and migrated westwards.

By the early Messinian Neotethys had become a land-locked sea, experiencing a sea-level drop of between 1 to 3 km as evaporation under a somewhat more arid climate took place. Bathylal sedimentation was replaced by shallow marine/brackish hypersaline lacustrine conditions with a series of shallow, variably interconnected lake-basins. Initially, alternations of chalky marls and sapropelic muds were deposited, but were replaced by gypsiferous sediments as evaporation became more significant. This resulted in the build-up of significant thicknesses of evaporitic selenitic gypsum deposits across the whole of the Neotethyan region. By the late Messinian, cycles of periodic freshwater recharge of the basins and continuing evaporation gave lagoonal muds, palaeosols, and thin evaporite horizons, with numerous emergent karstic erosion surfaces. In the latest Messinian the Atlantic connection was restored, and sea levels rose once again in the Neotethyan Ocean basin.