Garnet megacrysts in oceanic crust of the Troodos Ophiolite, Cyprus

GEOSITES Garnet megacrysts in oceanic crust of the Troodos Ophiolite, CyprusGarnets have been reported only very rarely from the in-situ oceanic crust or ophiolites, and invariably these occurrences comprise very small mineral grains (Bertrand and Vuagnat 1980;Plmper et al. 2014; Faryad and Dianiska 2003).With this geosite, we present an exceptional outcrop containing up to fist-sized garnets as rock-forming mineral in former oceanic crust in the Cyprus Troodos Ophiolite Complex.The Troodos Mountain range on Cyprus is one of the best-studied and best-known ophiolite complexes in the world.Detailed investigations of the complex, beginning in the 1950s, significantly shaped our understanding of both ophiolites and the oceanic lithosphere in general (e.g., Moores and Vine 1971;Robinson et al. 2003).The east-west running mountain range consists of an igneous complex of basic-to-ultrabasic intrusive and extrusive rocks.It can be divided into three units, the central Troodos plutonic complex ranging from dunites and peridotites to gabbroids, the sheeted dyke intrusive complex, and the Troodos pillow lava series (Gass 1963).Plagiogranites, which are a common feature of many ophiolites (e.g., Coleman and Peterman 1975;Pedersen and Malpas 1984;Whattam et al. 2016) and the present-day ocean crust (e.g., Jns et al. 2009;Nguyen et al. 2018), also occur in the Troodos Ophiolite sequence, generally near the contact between the sheeted dyke complex and the underlying gabbroids.Mineralogically, these plagiogranites generally comprise plagioclase, quartz, and minor mafic minerals, such as amphibole or epidote.