IMPLICATIONS OF THE CONTINENT-CONTINENT COLLISION BETWEEN THE ERATOSTHENES SEAMOUNT AND CYPRUS

The Eratosthenes Seamount (ESM) is located in the Eastern Mediterranean south of Cyprus. It is considered to represent a continental fragment of the former African-Arabian continental margin. In the late Miocene the subduction of the African-Arabian Plate below the Anatolian Plate turned to continent-continent collision when the ESM collided with the island of Cyprus. This altered the tectonic pattern of the entire Eastern Mediterranean. Since the ESM blocks the northward drift of the African Plate south of Cyprus, wrench faults have to compensate the ongoing the northward motion of the African-Arabian Plate (around 1cm/year). The Baltim Hecateus Line (BHL) separates the ESM on its eastern side from the deep Levantine Basin. The BHL belongs to a set of extensional fault systems that were formed during the Triassic formation of the Levantine Basin.

A set of recent multichannel seismic 2D lines (MCS), acquired with the R/V Maria S. Merian (MSM14-2) in 2010, will be presented here. The NW-SE trending lines show a transformal to transpressional nature of the Baltim Hecateus Line and North of the Eratosthenes Seamount compressional structures are imaged. We propose that the BHL was reactivated as a transform fault during the incipient collision of the ESM with the island of Cyprus in order to compensate the northward motion of the African-Arabian Plate. At the eastern rim of the ESM the BHL coincides with a prominent bathymetric escarpment.