The Mediterranean Ridge is a wide ridge in the bed of the Mediterranean Sea, running along a rough quarter circle from Calabria, south of Crete, to the southwest corner of Turkey, and from there eastwards south of Turkey, including Cyprus.
It is caused by the African Plate subducting under the Eurasian and Anatolian plates. As the African Plate moves slowly north-northeastward, it is plowing up the igneous and sedimentary rocks of the Mediterranean seafloor, lifting them from the seabed creating Cyprus and other islands along the ridge.
Along the ridge have been found five deep basins full of anoxic brine where Messinian evaporite deposits of brine caught up in this ongoing orogeny have dissolved.
Famous quotes containing the word ridge:
“All sound heard at the greatest possible distance produces one and the same effect, a vibration of the universal lyre, just as the intervening atmosphere makes a distant ridge of earth interesting to our eyes by the azure tint it imparts to it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)