Geological correlation between northern Cyprus and southern Anatolia

Abstract

The island of Cyprus constitutes a fragment of southern Anatolia separated from the mainland by left-oblique transtension in late Cenozoic time. However, a geological framework of offset features of south-central Anatolia, for comparison of Cyprus with a source region within and west of the southeastern Anatolian suture zone, has not yet been developed. In this paper, I enumerate, describe, and compare a full suite of potentially correlative spatial and temporal elements exposed in both regions. Northern Cyprus and south-central Anatolia have identical tectonostratigraphic units. At the base of both belts, crop out ophiolitic mélange – accretionary complex generated during the northward subduction of the Neo-Tethyan Oceanic lithosphere from the Late Cretaceous until the end of middle Eocene. The nappes of the Taurus carbonate platform were thrust above this internally chaotic unit during late Eocene. They began to move as a coherent nappe pile from that time onward. An asymmetrical flysch basin was formed in front of this southward-moving nappe pile during the early Miocene. The nappes were then thrust over the flysch basin fill and caused its tight folding. Cyprus separated from Anatolia in the Pleistocene–Holocene when transtensional oblique faults with dip-slip components caused the development of the Adana and Iskenderun basins and the separation of Cyprus from Anatolia.