Choletria is an abandoned (almost) village in Cyprus, about 15 km east of Paphos. There is a new village nearby which is sometimes called Choletria also or Nea Choletria (New Choletria). I am going to show you some photos of the old village (or what remains of it) which was relocated because of earthquakes in the second half of the 20th century.

By the way, the latest relocation is not the first one in the history of Choletria. It was originally located on the coast but its inhabitants decided to leave because of frequent attacks by seaborne Saracen pirates. Unfortunate history indeed.

Slickenside is a striated and polished face of a rock. Slickensided rocks are common in tectonically active areas because they are formed by frictional shear during movement of fault surfaces relative to each other.

The example above is from Cyprus. I stumbled upon it accidentally. It just lay there in the high grass waiting to be discovered. The chance to be discovered by a geologist is actually pretty good because the area surrounding the rock is extraordinarily rich in varied geology. There is an exposure of tectonic mélange, chloritized lava, exposure of trachyte with large sanidine phenocrysts, and pillow basalt within a rectange of a few hundred meters. Only few kilometers away are a hill made of serpentinite, a village (named Choletria) severely damaged by an earthquake, and bentonite which played a role in the destruction of the aforementioned village, and many more interesting rock types like chert, chalk, etc.

There are no signs directing to these interesting places. I am often astonished how little most people care about geology. Of course, this isn’t going to change. Rocks will remain boring for the majority of people in the future just as they are now but nevertheless I couldn’t stop thinking about how the place might look like for example 100 years from now. I think there is a good chance that it is a geopark with nature trails and lots of explaining info boards. There is lots and lots of potential for it in the region between Nea Choletria and Nata.

Pillow lava is a lava flow that forms underwater, usually at the bottom of the oceans. Individual pillows are mostly up to one meter in diameter. Pillow lavas are extremely common on the Earth’s surface — they form the upper part of the oceanic crust, but we have a chance to see them relatively infrequently because very few of us have ever visited their natural birthplace.

http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/PillowLavaInCyprus#5736415370720777906
Pillow lava near Choletria.

Sometimes though they get pushed on top of the continental crust for us to take a look. One very good place to admire pillow lavas is Cyprus. The Troodos ophiolite, which makes up large part of the island, is a complete section of the former ocean floor. Hence, pillows are common in Cyprus.

Pillow lavas may show radial cracks (when you have a chance to see the cross section). These cracks are similar to cracks in columnar basalt. The cracks are perpendicular to the margin of the pillow, that’s why they are radial. Cracks in columnar basalt are parallel because they formed in a lava flow that cooled as a sheet. Another common feature of pillows are chilled margins. This is very fine-grained or glassy outer part of the pillow which cooled very rapidly in cold seawater. This material is called tachylyte. Some of the pillows below show radial cracks and some have chilled margins, which may be altered to palagonite.

Pillow lava in Cyprus is very common. I often stumbled upon it unintentionally while looking for something else. It was even easy to get bored of pillows, but I tried to remind myself that as soon as I will go home there are pillows nowhere near, so I took many photos. Here are some of the pillows I saw in Cyprus:

http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/PillowLavaInCyprus#5736415373706691570
Near Fasoula.

http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/PillowLavaInCyprus#5736415389679172834
Near Fasoula.
http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/PillowLavaInCyprus#5736415393971943618
Pillow lava (in the middle) near Petra tou Romiou.
http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/PillowLavaInCyprus#5736415396820863458
Near Petra tou Romiou.
http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/PillowLavaInCyprus#5736415416634024642
Near Petra tou Romiou.

http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/PillowLavaInCyprus#5736415442622713378
Pillow lava in the Mathiatis open-pit mine.
http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/PillowLavaInCyprus#5736415446990389586
Pillow lava in the middle between dikes along the Akaki River.
http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/PillowLavaInCyprus#5736415465690619346
Along the Akaki River.
http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/PillowLavaInCyprus#5736415470530644354
Pillow with a chilled (glassy) margin (Kamara River).
http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/PillowLavaInCyprus#5736415475151745026
Pillow lava along the Kamara River.
http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/PillowLavaInCyprus#5736415494111151618
Along the Kamara River.
http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/PillowLavaInCyprus#5736415498178617378
Along the Kamara River. Black chilled margin is partly preserved.
http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/PillowLavaInCyprus#5736415505847697410
Pillow lava near Arediou (along the Akaki River).
http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/PillowLavaInCyprus#5736415537648989746
Near Arediou (along the Akaki River). Former chilled margin is altered to orange palagonite.
http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/PillowLavaInCyprus#5736415538761772514
Pillow lava breccia near Arediou (along the Akaki River).
http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/PillowLavaInCyprus#5736415543655593986
Near Arediou (along the Akaki River) with palagonitic rim.
http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/PillowLavaInCyprus#5736415561395875554
Near Arediou (along the Akaki River).
http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/PillowLavaInCyprus#5736415566819782546
Near Arediou (along the Akaki River) with radial cracks.

Twinning is common in gypsum crystals which often results in beautiful swallowtail habit.

I saw very nice exposure of swallowtail gypsum crystals in Cyprus. The crystals are several meters long and they all seem to be twinned.

These crystals formed in a shallow hypersaline lagoon in the Messinian (the last stage of the Miocene) about 6 million years ago. I have also written about laminated gypsum that is exposed nearby and formed roughly at the same time but probably in somewhat deeper water.

http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/Cyprus#5736496868746129042
Twinned gypsum crystals (selenite) in Cyprus near Elediou. I know some of you might be worried about the hammer but I can assure you that I used it for scale only. I always carry it in my backpack when geologising and use it more often for scale (if pen is too small) than for smashing rocks. I would not consider destroying an exposure as beautiful as this and I very rarely attack outcrops at all. However, I do collect and often smash loose rocks.
http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/Cyprus#5736496870958169154

Petra tou Romiou (the Rock of Romios) is a large white rock at the southwestern coast of Cyprus. The rock is very famous because Aphrodite (the goddess of love) allegedly borned from the waves here. Right now it seems to be a magnetic spot for those who have fallen in love or are just married.

The name of the rock, however, has nothing to do with Aphrodite. Romios was a byzantine folk hero who used this rock to hurl at the pirates.

I visited the place for a strange reason — I just wanted to know what type of rock it is and to take a look to see whether I notice something geologically interesting.

I did find out that the rock is a limestone breccia and there are nice grooves on the upper part which look like slickenside. Slickenside is a smooth and shiny polished face of a rock, the result of a friction between two moving blocks of rock.

This probably indicates that Petra tou Romiou was once part of a tectonic mélange. This is a mixture of very different rocks (accretionary wedge) which is pushed on top of the edge of the continental margin by the subduction process. The same process probably also brecciated the rock which was originally a reef grown on volcanic oceanic islands. There are volcanic rocks nearby, including pillows, which lend support to this hypotheses.

http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/Cyprus#5736496882391685442
Petra tou Romiou. I did find out that the rock is a limestone breccia and there are nice grooves on the upper part which look like slickenside. Slickenside is a smooth and shiny polished face of a rock, the result of a friction between two moving blocks of rock.
http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/Cyprus#5736496889164156930
Petra tou Romiou is composed of limestone breccia.
http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/Cyprus#5736496895987113410
Slickenside on Petra tou Romiou.

I visited today a place that is truly classic geological site in Cyprus. That’s what my geological guidebook says which I highly recommend if you are going to Cyprus for a geotrip. The book is titled „Cyprus“ and it is part of a „Classic Geology in Europe“ series. The photo of the outcrop described below is on the cover of the book.

This site is an outcrop of hyaloclastite with pillow basalt above it and both of them are cut by a swarm of dikes. It truly looks spectacular and there is a very appropriately placed hill on another side of the river running before the outcrop that offers very nice view to the scene.

http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/Cyprus#5736496974744299650
Hyaloclastite in the middle, pillow basalt on top of it and dike swarms cutting both of them.
http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/Cyprus#5736496992801278498
Elongated vesicles in the dikes clearly indicate that the magma moved laterally, not just vertically upwards.
http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/Cyprus#5736497033173695090
Hyaloclastite is a glassy volcanic material which probably formed by the underwater fire-fountaining.
http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/Cyprus#5736497092180885890
Pillows about 50 meters away along the river.

Cyprus is one of the few places where rocks from the mantle crop out at the surface. They are not part of the mantle anymore, of course, but they were during the formation. Seeing mantle rocks and walking through moho (boundary between the crust and the mantle) should definitely be in every geologists lifetime list. I am very glad I did it today.

http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/Cyprus#5736497097636994738
Me holding a piece of the mantle (harzburgite) in my hand.
http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/Cyprus#5736497007440923922
Harzburgite is the main rock type of the deepest exposed sections. Harzburgite is a peridotite (ultramafic rock) that is composed of olivine (brown) and orthopyroxene (greenish brown reflective crystals) with minor chromite. Harzburgite is a residue of partial melting (take basalt or gabbro out of the mantle and harzburgite is what remains).
http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/Cyprus#5736496960203772226
Dunite is an ultramafic rock that is composed almost exclusively of olivine. Dunites here usually contain some orthopyroxene as well and there seems to be a gradational transition from dunite to harzburgite.
http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/Cyprus#5736496967181919954
Orthopyroxenite (ultramafic rock that contains almost only orthopyroxene) forms layers in dunite and harzburgite. Here is orthopyroxenite layer on top of dunite block.
http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/Cyprus#5736497050092795026
Littlebit higher (stratigraphically but also topographically) there is a boundary between the crust and the mantle (moho) which is represented by layered cumulates.
http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/Cyprus#5736496998177608402
All the rock types are partly hydrothermally altered (serpentinized). Here is a block of serpentinite on top of harzburgite.

Cyprus is a mountainous country which makes sights like this common. It wasn’t the first one that day. I saw two slumps in a row and when the third came I wanted to stop and take a picture. I was driving down from the Troodos Mountains towards Paphos in the western coast. The brownish outcrop is part of a heavily weathered sheeted dyke complex which is a part of the ophiolitic sequence (rocks making up oceanic crust).

This is fluvial (river-channel) deposit from the Pleistocene near the village of Kouklia in southwestern Cyprus. The large boulders are mostly gabbro and diabase. These rocks were carried here from the Troodos ophiolite which is about 30 kilometers upstream.

There are several layers with different grain-size. Layer of coarse sand and gravel is between two layers of conglomerate. Below the fluvial sequence is a layer of marly chalk.

http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/Cyprus#5736496901032965602
http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/Cyprus#5736496906257813138
http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/Cyprus#5736496948971398754
http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/Cyprus#5736496920403712050

I think it is pretty safe to say that today was the best day I have ever had as a geologist. I am hiking and driving around Cyprus. This island is a real paradise for geologists. I highly recommend to visit Cyprus if you are interested in spectacular and quite easily accessible geology. Here is the list of geological stuff I saw today:

mélange
mass wasting (several nice examples)
chloritic green lava
amphibolite
trachyte with sanidine phenocrysts
pillow lava (I saw pillow lava in three different locations!)
slickenside (at least three sites)
serpentinite
serpentinized harzburgite
mudstone (several locations)
thrust fault
quartz and chalcedony veins
earthquake-damaged houses
river-flooded road
chert
calcarenite
marl
bentonite
calcite druse
folds in several locations
fluvial sediments (conglomerate) in several locations
gabbro and diabase clasts in conglomerate
sandstone
limestone breccia
lava flows
amygdaloidal and porphyraceous trachybasalt (as lava and pillows)

It took the whole day which I had at my disposal because I did it all alone. It’s easier that way because I had no distractions and didn’t have to worry about someone else who most likely isn’t addicted to geology.

I bragged about pillow basalts. To back my words I will post some photos of the pillows I saw today:

http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/Cyprus#5736497057378118498
Olivine tholeiitic pillows near Fasoula (SW part of Cyprus).
http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/Cyprus#5736497075255470690
Triassic pillow basalt (actually trachybasalt) at the southwestern coast of Cyprus (1 km east of Petra tou Romiou).
http://picasaweb.google.com/107509377372007544953/Cyprus#5736497061564741538
The same outcrop 1 km east of Petra Tou Romiou.

Further reading

Edwards, S., Hudson-Edwards, K., Cann, J., Malpas, J. & Xenophontos, C. (2010). Cyprus (Classic Geology in Europe) Dunedin Academic Press Ltd.
Greensmith, Trevor (1994). Geologists’ Association Guides: Southern Cyprus No. 50 (Geologists’ Association Guides) Geologists’ Association.