Tectonic significance of the Eratosthenes Seamount: a continental fragment in the process of collision with a subduction zone in the eastern Mediterranean (Ocean Drilling Program Leg 160)
Abstract
One of the objectives of ODP Leg 160 in the eastern Mediterranean Sea (April-May, 1995) was concerned with the study of processes of genesis and incipient collision of an inferred crustal fragment, the Eratosthenes Seamount, with the active margin of the Eurasian plate to the north, represented by southern Cyprus. The upper part of the Eratosthenes Seamount (i.e. upper several hundred metres) was found to include both shallow- and deep-water carbonates dating back to Early Cretaceous time. Shallow-water platform carbonate deposition, similar to that of the onshore Levant continental margin to the east (i.e. part of the North African plate), was followed by submergence to bathyal depths (>1000 m) in the Late Cretaceous to Middle Eocene, punctuated by depositional and tectonic hiatuses. Tectonic uplift (approximately 1 km) was followed by shallow-water carbonate deposition in the Early Miocene. The platform was exposed during the Messinian desiccation crisis. During the Early Pliocene the platform subsided to bathyal depths associated with localised accumulation of limestone debris flows. Subsidence accelerated in the Late Pliocene-Early Pleistocene, reaching a present-day maximum depth of ca. 2500 m. Deformation of the Eratosthenes Seamount (i.e. subsidence and high-angle faulting) resulted from crustal flexure, induced by southward overthrusting of the Cyprus active margin. Tectonic subsidence of the Eratosthenes Seamount was approximately synchronous with rapid surface uplift of the over-riding plate, the Troodos Ophiolite of southern Cyprus. This uplift is explained in terms of incipient collision of an Eratosthenes continental fragment with a subduction trench, coupled with the effects of diapiric protrusion of serpentinite located within the core of the Troodos Ophiolite. The Eratosthenes drilling, thus, documented a modern analogue of subduction/collisional processes leading to accretion of continental fragments and carbonate platforms in orogenic belts.
- Publication:
-
Tectonophysics
- Pub Date:
- November 1998
- DOI:
- 10.1016/S0040-1951(98)00178-4
- Bibcode:
- 1998Tectp.298...63R