Well, the plan was to get to Rodiani today, to have a look at some of the ophiolitic units there. However, having failed to find the correct road from Metamorphosis, we took a trip to one of the random ophiolitic blocks I mentioned in yesterday's post. The outcrop was some 20m high; a cliff face on the side of the road. Thin shales and a thick Cretaceous carbonate sequence capped the unit, which itself was probably underlain by Triassic shelf carbonates. The unit itself was sheared roughly parallel to the Cretaceous bedding, and comprised rounded red cherts, serpentines and extremely weathered gabbros, all within a pale fine grained groundmass (presumably some variety of serpentine). More resistant white bodies made up one layer; this had an undulose base but flat top.
Even our friend mantis religiosa likes a good conglomerate...In short, nothing like an ordinary ophiolitic mass. Predominantly ophiolitic material, yes. Sheared, yes. But actually a part of an ophiolite? Nope. According to the IGME Siatista Map Sheet, this locality is part of a larger one between the Triassic-Jurassic and Cretaceous filled with material from both the Pelagonian Continent (schists) and ophiolite (cherts, basalts, gabbros, serpentine). I have a feeling that this may be the foreland basin material expected of collision, which would suggest that the Mesohellenic ophiolite either never made it this far, or was completely eroded and replaced with this material before deposition of the Cretaceous carbonates. Which is a problem for geologists invoking a huge Pindos-Pelagonian-Vardar ophiolite. But before I can say anything more, we need to have a look at some more of these ophiolitic 'blobs' stuck on top of the Pelagonian.
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