We surveyed the Owen Fracture Zone at the boundary between the Arabia and India plates in the NW Indian Ocean using a high-resolution multibeam echo-sounder (Owen survey, 2009) for search of active faults. Bathymetric data reveal a previously unrecognized submarine fault scarp system running for over 800 km between the Sheba Ridge in the Gulf of Aden and the Makran subduction zone. The primary plate boundary structure is not the bathymetrically high Owen Ridge, but is instead a series of clearly delineated strike-slip fault segments separated by several releasing and restraining bends. Despite abundant sedimentary supply by the Indus River flowing from the Himalaya, fault scarps are not obscured by recent deposits and can be followed over hundreds of kilometres, pointing to very active tectonics. The total strike-slip displacement of the fault system is 10-12 km, indicating that it has been active for the past ~3 to 6 million years if its current rate of motion of 3 ±1 mm year-1 has remained stable. We describe the geometry of this recent fault system, including a major pull-apart basin at the latitude 20°N, and we show that it closely follows an arc of small circle centred on the Arabia-India pole of rotation, as expected for a transform plate boundary.

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International audienceThe pelagic cover of the Owen Ridge in the Arabian Sea recorded the evolution of the Indian monsoon since the Middle Miocene. The uplift of the Owen Ridge resulted from tectonic processes along the previously unidentified Miocene India-Arabia plate boundary. Based on seismic reflection data tied with deep-sea drilling to track the Miocene India-Arabia plate boundary, we propose a new timing for the uplift of the Owen Ridge and highlight its impact on the record of climate changes in pelagic sediments. The new dataset reveals a fracture zone east of the Owen Ridge corresponding to the fossil plate boundary, and documents that the main uplift of the Owen Ridge occurred close to ∼8.5 Ma, and is coeval with a major uplift of the east Oman margin. Late Miocene deformation at the India-Arabia plate boundary is also coeval with the onset of intra-plate deformation in the Central Indian Ocean, suggesting a kinematic change of India and surrounding plates in the Late Miocene. The uplift of the Owen Ridge above the lysocline at ∼8.5 Ma accounts for a better preservation of Globigerina bulloides in the pelagic cover, previously misinterpreted as the result of a monsoon intensification event