Active fault found under Adriatic Sea

TUCSON, Jan. 24 (UPI) -- A U.S.-led international team of geologists has discovered an active fault is creating new Dalmatian Islands off the Croatian coast in the Adriatic Sea.

The fault, which is also creating more of the Dinaride Mountains of Croatia, previously was believed to have stopped growing 20 million to 30 million years ago.

The fault is being created as the leading edge of the Eurasian plate scrapes and slides its way over a former piece of the African plate called the South Adria microplate, lead researcher Assistant Professor Richard Bennett of the University of Arizona-Tucson said.

"It's a collision zone," Bennett said. "Two continents are colliding and building mountains."

Bennett and his colleagues from the University of Zagreb, the University of Washington in Seattle and the Croatian Geodetic Institute said the region along the undersea fault has no evidence of large-magnitude earthquakes occurring during the last 2,000 years. However, they said if the fault is the type that could move abruptly and cause earthquakes, tsunami calculations for the region would need to be revised.

"It has implications for southern Italy, Croatia, Montenegro and Albania," Bennett said.

The research appears in the January issue of the journal Geology.