Fluvial stacking due to plate collision and uplift during the Early Pleistocene in Cyprus

Southern Cyprus is situated within a mosaic terrane that has been fragmented between the northward drifting African and Arabian plates and the Eurasian plate. Enormous uplift of the earth mantle in the Tróodos Mountains is explained by two models. The subduction model explains subduction along the Cyprean arc to be the driving force for uplift whereas after the restraining bend model westward squeezing of Cyprus along strike-slip faulting is responsible for the enormous uplift at restraining bends. Since its emergence as an island in early Miocene times, landscape formation on Cyprus has been strongly controlled by this uplift. Until the Plio-Pleistocene, a strait belt separated the southern unroofed ophiolitic core region-the Tróodos Mountains-from the folded Kyrenia range to the north. This former sea basin, nowadays the Mesaoría Basin, is linked with the Tróodos Mountains by a dissected glacis with a thick cover of river deposits. The highest and oldest river deposits (Apalós Formation) were studied in the Vlokkariá hill southwest of Lefkosía. The 45.5 m thick Apalós Formation of Early Pleistocene age exhibits 24 sedimentary units (Fluviatile Series). Their magnetostratigraphical characters align with the Matuyama chron including the Olduvai and Jaramillo subchrons thus comprising about 1.15 Ma within the Early Pleistocene. This fluvial stack indicates a very flat and deeply lying river environment flowing from a slowly uplifting Tróodos hinterland. It happened during the end of Early Pleistocene when the enhanced Tróodos uplift started the dissection of the stacked river plain.