Mediterranean Ridge

Location of the ridge

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 Cyprus and Turkey.

It is an accretionary wedge 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 and creating Cyprus and other islands along the ridge.

Along the ridge, five deep basins full of anoxic brine have been found, where Messinian evaporite deposits of brine caught up in this ongoing orogeny have dissolved.^[1]

In the far future, it could grow into a long high mountain range if the continued northward movement of Africa obliterates the east part of the Mediterranean Sea.

References

1. ↑ Exhumation of Messinian evaporites in the deep-sea and creation of deep anoxic brine-filled collapsed basins, from Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, University of Milan.