Cyprus Arc in the context of "African Plate"

Cyprus is an island in the Eastern Basin of the Mediterranean Sea. It is the third-largest island in the Mediterranean, after the Italian islands of Sicily and Sardinia, and the 80th-largest island in the world by area. It is located south of the Anatolian Peninsula, yet it belongs to the Cyprus Arc. Geographically, Cyprus is located in West Asia, but the country is considered a European country in political geography. Cyprus also had lengthy periods of mainly Greek and intermittent Anatolian, Levantine, Byzantine, Ottoman, and Western European influence.

The island is dominated by two mountain ranges, the Troodos Mountains and the Kyrenia Mountains or Pentadaktylos, and the central plain, the Mesaoria, between them. The Troodos Mountains cover most of the southern and western portions of the island and account for roughly half its area. The narrow Kyrenia Range extends along the northern coastline. It is not as high as the Troodos Mountains, and it occupies substantially less area. The two mountain ranges run generally parallel to the Taurus Mountains on the Turkish mainland, the outlines of which are visible from northern Cyprus. Coastal lowlands, varying in width, surround the island.

The Latakia Ridge is a major underwater formation extending over 200 km along the northern margin of the Levantine Basin, marking the plate boundary between the African Plate and the Anatolian Plate. Rising up to 500 metres above the surrounding seafloor, it forms the easternmost segment of the Cyprus Arc, connecting the Hecataeus Rise south of Cyprus with a series of ridges off the Syrian coast. The ridge first developed in the mid-Late Cretaceous as a compressional fold-thrust belt, and was later reworked by left-lateral strike-slip motion from the Pliocene to the present. Exploration has revealed significant hydrocarbon potential in the region, with seismic images suggesting large gas accumulations trapped beneath the thrust faults.