Cenozoic Evolution of the North-Eastern Mediterranean Basins

The Eastern Mediterranean lies at the junction of the African, Arabian, and Eurasian plates, a region shaped by a long and complex tectonic history. While the Levant Basin in the southern sector has been extensively studied for hydrocarbon exploration, the northern domain offshore Cyprus, Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon remains less understood. In this study, we interpret a regional multichannel seismic reflection profile (MS56) in the time domain and then perform a time-to-depth conversion, supported by structural balancing, to build a crustal-scale geological model. Our reconstruction identifies three temporally constrained deformation stages—at the end of the Paleogene, an established accretionary wedge records the final phases of Tethyan subduction; during the Tortonian, strike-slip kinematics dominated, with sectors experiencing transtension or transpression and out-of-sequence thrusting in the outer wedge; and during the Messinian, continental collision was marked mainly by strike-slip deformation and regional uplift—revealing a progressive, diachronic evolution across the margin and the transition from subduction to continental collision. The Cenozoic evolution shows limited overall shortening, with deformation accommodated by out-of-sequence thrusting and strike-slip faulting. We reinterpret the Larnaka Ridge as a former extensional structure later inverted during Messinian transpression. At depth, the margin is structured by a basal detachment within Triassic evaporites, explaining the geometry of the accretionary wedge, topographic asymmetry, and structural vergence. The acoustic basement is interpreted as a composite of obducted ophiolitic slices and thinned continental crust. These findings provide a time-calibrated crustal model for the Cenozoic evolution of the northern Eastern Mediterranean.