The Totschunda Fault is a major active dextral (right-lateral) continental

strike-slip fault In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from the action of plate tectonic ...

in southeastern Alaska. It forms a link between the

Denali Fault The Denali Fault is a major intracontinental dextral (right lateral) Fault (geology)#Strike-slip faults, strike-slip fault in western North America, extending from northwestern British Columbia, Canada to the central region of the U.S. state of ...

to the northwest and the Fairweather Fault to the southeast. The northwestern end of the fault ruptured during the

2002 Denali earthquake The 2002 Denali earthquake occurred at 22:12:41 UTC (1:12 PM Alaska Time Zone, Local Time) November 3 with an epicenter 66 km ESE of Denali National Park, Alaska, United States. This 7.9 Moment magnitude scale, Mw earthquake was the larges ...

. Based on

radiometric dating Radiometric dating, radioactive dating or radioisotope dating is a technique which is used to Chronological dating, date materials such as Rock (geology), rocks or carbon, in which trace radioactive impurity, impurities were selectively incorporat ...

of a dike that cuts fault rock associated with the Totschunda Fault to about 114 million years ago, the fault zone was initiated during the latter part of the

Early Cretaceous The Early Cretaceous (geochronology, geochronological name) or the Lower Cretaceous (chronostratigraphy, chronostratigraphic name) is the earlier or lower of the two major divisions of the Cretaceous. It is usually considered to stretch from 143.1 ...

, associated with the accretion of the Wrangellia Terrane.

References

Seismic faults of Alaska {{Alaska-geologic-formation-stub