Overview of the study area. Onshore areas colored in grey, subsea bathymetry colored in shades according to scale. Marked gas fields (yellow) represent recent discoveries. The area is mainly controlled by the interplay of the African, Arabian, and Eurasian plates. The Eratosthenes Seamount (ESM) represents a large carbonate platform which is located on the underlying, larger Eratosthenes Continental Block (ECB). The southern Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of Cyprus represents the available blocks for hydrocarbon exploration. The samples of this study were collected from the cores that were drilled along the northern slope of the ESM during the ODO Leg 160 campaign. Modified after Hawie et al. (2013) and Symeou et al. (2018).