Earth's one‐of‐a‐kind fault: The Tanlu fault

Abstract

AbstractLarge‐scale strike‐slip faulting commonly occurs in active tectonic margins, but rarely, if ever, do large faults cut deep into ancient continental nuclei known as cratons. With thick mantle roots, cratons are considered to be the most tectonically stable portions of Earth's continental lithosphere, with an eminent exception being the relatively recent destruction of North China craton. Here, we show that from 240 to 165 Ma ago the roughly coeval continental collisions of South China to the south and Mongolia to the north ruptured the Tanlu fault within the then thick North China craton. A large ~450 km displacement mechanically induced by a ~16° intracratonic rotation along the Tanlu fault reconciles the offsets of geological piercing points and palaeomagnetic data of North China on either side of the fault. Shortly after the displacement of the only large young strike‐slip cratonic fault, the cratonic lithosphere of eastern North China collapsed.