The geometry of the North Anatolian transform fault in the Sea of Marmara and its temporal evolution: implications for the development of intracontinental transform faults

The North Anatolian Fault is a 1200 km long strike-slip fault system connecting the East Anatolian convergent area with the Hellenic subduction zone and, as such, represents an intracontinental transform fault. It began forming some 13–11 Ma ago within a keirogen, called the North Anatolian Shear Zone, which becomes wider from east to west. Its width is maximum at the latitude of the Sea of Marmara, where it is 100 km. The Marmara Basin is unique in containing part of an active strike-slip fault system in a submarine environment in which there has been active sedimentation in a Paratethyan context where stratigraphic resolution is higher than elsewhere in the Mediterranean. It is also surrounded by a long-civilised rim where historical records reach well into the second half of the first millennium BCE (before common era). In this study, we have used 210 multichannel seismic reflexion profiles, adding up to 6210 km profile length and high-resolution bathymetry and chirp profiles reported in the literature...