Southern Cyprus is situated within a mosaic terrane that has been fragmented between the northward drifting African and Arabian plates and the Eurasian plate. Enormous uplift of the earth mantle in the Tróodos Mountains is explained by two models. The subduction model explains subduction along the Cyprean arc to be the driving force for uplift whereas after the restraining bend model westward squeezing of Cyprus along strike-slip faulting is responsible for the enormous uplift at restraining bends. Since its emergence as an island in early Miocene times, landscape formation on Cyprus has been strongly controlled by this uplift. Until the Plio-Pleistocene, a strait belt separated the southern unroofed ophiolitic core region-the Tróodos Mountainsfrom the folded Kyrenia range to the north. This former sea basin, nowadays the Mesaoría Basin, is linked with the Tróodos Mountains by a dissected glacis with a thick cover of river deposits. The highest and oldest river deposits (Apalós Formation) were studied in the Vlokkariá hill southwest of Lefkosía. The 45.5 m thick Apalós Formation of Early Pleistocene age exhibits 24 sedimentary units (Fluviatile Series). Their magnetostratigraphical characters align with the Matuyama chron including the Olduvai and Jaramillo subchrons thus comprising about 1.15 Ma within the Early Pleistocene. This fluvial stack indicates a very flat and deeply lying river environment flowing from a slowly uplifting Tróodos hinterland. It happened during the end of Early Pleistocene when the enhanced Tróodos uplift started the dissection of the stacked river plain.

[1] Landscape formation on Cyprus is controlled by processes directly linked to the uplift and unroofing of the Troodos ophiolite complex since mainly early Miocene times. Understanding the island's geology and dating individual tectonic events will help in differentiating between tectonically controlled uplift and eustatic sea level or climatic changes. In order to improve the timing of these events, a magnetostratigraphic study was carried out on two terraces in the Mesaoria Basin of central Cyprus. At Vlokkariá, southwest of Nicosia, an artificial cliff exposes the sedimentary Apalós Formation of early Pleistocene age. A nearby section situated on a terrace, probably postdating the Vlokkariá section, was sampled at Kókkinos. Remanence-carrying minerals are end-member magnetite and maghemite formed by exsolution and oxidation from ophiolitic titanomagnetite. Hematite as a late alteration product is also present. Alternating field demagnetized paleomagnetic samples yield predominantly reversed polarities interpreted to have been acquired as early detrital remanent magnetization during the Matuyama chron. Two zones of normal polarity within the Apalós Formation are interpreted to correlate to the Olduvai and Jaramillo subchrons. Pre-Apalós marine sediments at the bottom of the Vlokkariá section show transitional polarity behavior and therefore might correlate with the onset of the Reunion event. Results from the Kókkinos section are exclusively of normal polarity, which has been acquired during the Brunhes chron. Sedimentation rates derived from these magnetostratigraphic results are in the order of 3-6 cm/kyr with a marked increase to 50 cm/kyr just below the MatuyamaJaramillo polarity transition, which is interpreted to reflect increased uplift of the source area and supports the hypothesis of pulsed uplift of the Troodos ophiolite complex.