The Eratosthenes Seamount or Eratosthenes Tablemount is a

seamount A seamount is a large geologic landform that rises from the ocean floor that does not reach to the water's surface (sea level), and thus is not an island, islet or cliff-rock. Seamounts are typically formed from extinct volcanoes that rise abru ...

in the Eastern

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the e ...

, in the

Levantine basin The Levantine Sea (Arabic: بحر الشام, tr, Levanten Denizi, el, Θάλασσα του Λεβάντε) is the easternmost part of the Mediterranean Sea. Geography The Levantine Sea is bordered by Turkey in the north and north-east co ...

about south of western

Cyprus Cyprus ; tr, Kıbrıs (), officially the Republic of Cyprus,, , lit: Republic of Cyprus is an island country located south of the Anatolian Peninsula in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Its continental position is disputed; while it is geo ...

. Unlike most seamounts, it is a

carbonate platform A carbonate platform is a sedimentary body which possesses topographic relief, and is composed of autochthonic calcareous deposits. Platform growth is mediated by sessile organisms whose skeletons build up the reef or by organisms (usually microb ...

not a volcano. It is a large, submerged

massif In geology, a massif ( or ) is a section of a planet's crust that is demarcated by faults or flexures. In the movement of the crust, a massif tends to retain its internal structure while being displaced as a whole. The term also refers to a ...

, about . Its peak lies at the depth of and it rises above the surrounding seafloor, which is located at the depth of up to and is a part of the Herodotus Abyssal Plain. It is one of the largest features on the Eastern Mediterranean seafloor. In 2010 and 2012 the

Ocean Exploration Trust The ocean (also the sea or the world ocean) is the body of salt water that covers approximately 70.8% of the surface of Earth and contains 97% of Earth's water. An ocean can also refer to any of the large bodies of water into which the wor ...

's vessel

EV Nautilus ''Nautilus'' is a research vessel owned by the Ocean Exploration Trust under the direction of Robert Ballard, the researcher known for finding the wreck of the ''Titanic'' and the . The vessel's home port is at the AltaSea facility in San Pe ...

explored the seamount looking for shipwrecks. Three were found; two were Ottoman vessels from the 19th century and the third was from the 4th century BC. Such seamounts are considered to be ideal for the preservation of shipwrecks because at depths of around the areas are not disturbed by trawlers or by sediments coming off land.

Oceanography

The Cyprus eddy is a sustained

mesoscale eddy In fluid dynamics, an eddy is the swirling of a fluid and the reverse current created when the fluid is in a turbulent flow regime. The moving fluid creates a space devoid of downstream-flowing fluid on the downstream side of the object. Fluid beh ...

with a diameter about , regularly appearing above Eratosthenes Seamount. It was surveyed by oceanographic cruises notably in 1995, 2000, 2001 and 2009.

Geology

During the

Messinian crisis The Messinian salinity crisis (MSC), also referred to as the Messinian event, and in its latest stage as the Lago Mare event, was a geological event during which the Mediterranean Sea went into a cycle of partial or nearly complete desiccation (dry ...

, as the sea level in the Mediterranean dropped by about , the seamount emerged.

References

External links

* Mart, Yossi and Robertson, Alastair H. F. (1998).
Eratosthenes Seamount: an oceanographic yardstick recording the Late Mesozoic-Tertiary geological history of the Eastern Mediterranean
', in Robertson, A.H.F., Emeis, K.-C., Richter, C., and Camerlenghi, A. (eds.), Proceedings of the Ocean Drilling Program, Scientific Results, Vol. 160, Chapter 52, 701–708. * Kempler, Ditza (1998).
Eratosthenes Seamount: the possible spearhead of incipient continental collision in the Eastern Mediterranean
', in Robertson, A.H.F., Emeis, K.-C., Richter, C., and Camerlenghi, A. (eds.), Proceedings of the Ocean Drilling Program, Scientific Results, Vol. 160, Chapter 53, 709–721.

Seamounts of the Mediterranean Physical oceanography Continental fragments {{marine-geo-stub

Oceanography

Geology

See also

References

External links