A Miocene Limestone from Cyprus

Extract

The western peninsula of Cyprus, which is known as Akama or Akamas, is somewhat inaccessible and its geological features little known. It was not visited by the present writer in 1929, but Mr. C. P. Manglis, mining engineer of Nicosia, has recently traversed it and collected specimens of a fossiliferous Miocene limestone with interesting characters in places where no fossils had previously been found, and he informs me that a ridge of the Trypanian Series outcrops along the central part of the peninsula (though this is not indicated on Bellamy's map), and that there is also an abundant effusion of andesitic lavas. The limestones are white in colour and mostly hard, compact, or semicrystalline; they contain massive compound corals, generally in a poor state of preservation, their internal structure being often largely obliterated. Apart from corals, the rocks have only yielded a few large boring Lithodomi and some indeterminable small fragmentary impressions or casts of small gasteropods and lamellibranchs. It is to be remarked that Gaudry recorded' from the Miocene of Cyprus only one species of coral, Astraea [Orbicella] guettardi Defr., and that was from another part of the island. But limestones containing corals similar to those collected by Mr. Manglis occur in various parts of the Mediterranean basin, and we may especially compare those species described by Felix, Daus, Schaffer, Oppenheim, Blanckenhorn, Gregory, and Kühn from the Miocene of Asia Minor, Syria, Persia, Egypt, and Cyrenaica. The Miocene corals of Cilicia appear to be in, many cases identical with those in this collection, and bearing in mind the proved tectonic relations of Cyprus with the mainland, this is what we should expect. The literature on these Miocene corals is very extensive, and Kiihn has recently (Palaeontographica, lxxix, Abt. A, 1933) given a useful list of references which have been consulted in identifying the specimens in this collection.