Segmentation and growth of an obliquely reactivated normal fault

Detailed kinematic analysis of a large (1800 m maximum displacement) reactivated normal fault in the Taranaki Basin, New Zealand, has been conducted using high quality 3D seismic data. The Parihaka Fault is approximately north-south striking in basement, where it accrued Late Cretaceous to Early Eocene displacements in response to east-west extension, and was obliquely reactivated by NW–SE extension in the Pliocene. Reactivation resulted in upward propagation, newly formed segmentation and up-dip clockwise rotation of the fault surface by up to ∼20° from the strike of the basement fault. Fault segmentation, and map-view soft-linkage by relay zones in post Miocene strata, was synchronous with the formation of antithetic faults in Late Miocene strata at bends in the fault surface. Fault segment lengths, antithetic faults and relay zone dimensions were formed geologically instantaneously during initial reactivation of the main fault at 3.7–3.4 Ma (i.e. within the first ∼10% of faulting). Rapid formation of Pliocene fault segments is followed by displacement accumulation without an increase in fault segment length until eventual relay breaching when continued ramp rotation is unsustainable. This evolutionary history is consistent with a model in which arrays of fault segments are, from inception, components of a single coherent structure.