Raised braided stream gravels on Mount Keldağ, Hatay (Eastern Mediterranean coast, Turkey): implications of transformation to beachrock and ensuing tectonic uplift

On the seaward northwest slopes of Mount Keldağ, Hatay, the combination of an unconformably overlapping sequence of cemented gravels on a wave-cut platform, and a raised notch and irregular pits left by grazing molluscs on the walls of this notch, carved in an NE-trending high-angle fault plane, retain the record of raised braided stream gravels transformed into beachrock. From the OSL ages, this study reveals that deposition of this sequence occurred between 232.30 ± 31.62 and 214.01 ± 27.42 ka during the penultimate interglacial. The four distinct facies identified are massive matrix-supported conglomerate, massive to crudely stratified gravel, cross-stratified gravel, and clast-supported open-work gravel. Extending to the paleo-coastline during the MIS7 highstand, this sequence was cemented by carbonate and iron-oxide cements and records an uplift of around 0.1 mm/year up to the present. © 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.