Slip events on the thrust fault trigger shallow moonquakes that can cause strong seismic shaking many tens of kilometres away from the scarp. Credit: Arizona State University/Smithsonian ...

In the Japan trench bottom ~7500 deep, a 26 m high fault scarp that formed at 2011 Tohoku-oki megaquake was discovered during a manned submersible dive. It lies on the eastern slope of a ~60 m ...

Where faults run under rivers, this vertical movement can produce a fault scarp – a wall of rock and/or soil – that obstructs the river’s ability to continue flowing in its usual channel.

Crucially, they observed that glacial landforms 2.6 million years in age are laterally offset across the fault scarp by 1,000 m. Others, 132,000 years old, are laterally offset by 75 m.

The paper, “Tectonics and Seismicity of the Lunar South Polar Region,” published in the Planetary Science Journal today, Jan. 25, associates one of the most powerful moonquakes recorded by Apollo ...

The fault scarp found on the ocean floor is nearly vertical. Its height is the equivalent to a seven- or eight-story building, which is considered exceptionally large.

This vertical cliff consists of soft mud deposited on the Japan Trench bottom and was uplifted ~60 m by the 2011 megaquake. This was the first time that the fault scarp of a trench-type earthquake ...