Geology

[Lofos-5]

In the blog we recently discussed the topic of ophiolites - I just came across this picture of relatively nicely preserved pillow lavas that we spotted late 2010 in the southern Akamas (it also just reminded me how cold this particular winter is - on all 2010 December photos we are wearing shots and T-shirts...).

Pillow lavas are formed when lava extrudes at the sea floor and have characteristic pillow-shaped structures and a so called "chilled margin" which is nicely visible on the photo (one of my sons for scale ). Pillow lavas can be up to several metre in diameter and are the last rock type of the ophiolite sequence. They are often overlaid by deep water sediments.

The deepest part of the ophiolite sequence, oceanic mantle rocks, are very nicely exposed on the Artemis trail on Troodos - with plenty of signs explaining the names of them. These deeper mantle rocks often contain heavy minerals - and are also explored for copper, gold, silver etc. - see today's newspaper (I posted a ref in the General Discussion section).

A.

pillow lava 28 Dec 2010.jpg (161.45 KiB) Viewed 3083 times

[Lofos-5]

Even when touring around the country side for abandoned villages and old churches one is never far away from amazing geology.

These two photos were made from the car window somewhere close to Episkopi - unlike the photo above from 2017 here one can see the pillow lavas in three dimensions including the chilled margins (from when the hot lava hits the cold seawater at great depths at the mid-ocean ridges).

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There are geology students from many places all over the world visiting Cyprus to see outcrops like these - so much better than any textbook could illustrate it and unlike other places like Iran or Oman where similar outcrops exist here there is a beer to be enjoyed afterwards...

A.