Santorini

This spectacular outcrop shows light-colored deposits from the 3500-year-old Minoan eruption of Santorini volcano filling a valley cut in darker, bedded ashfall layers of Pleistocene age. The lower, beige-colored unit filling the ancient valley is a pumice-fall deposit from vertical explosions early in the eruption. It is overlain by laminated pyroclastic-surge deposits produced when water gained access to the magma reservoir as the volcano collapsed into the sea. The upper whitish layer truncating both these deposits is a pyroclastic-flow deposit.