This version is available at https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/43272/ Strathprints is designed to allow users to access the research output of the University of Strathclyde. Unless otherwise explicitly stated on the manuscript, Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Please check the manuscript for details of any other licences that may have been applied. You may not engage in further distribution of the material for any profitmaking activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute both the url (https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/) and the content of this paper for research or private study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge.Any correspondence concerning this service should be sent to the Strathprints administrator: strathprints@strath.ac.ukThe Strathprints institutional repository (https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk) is a digital archive of University of Strathclyde research outputs. It has been developed to disseminate open access research outputs, expose data about those outputs, and enable the management and persistent access to Strathclyde's intellectual output.Journal of the Geological Society, London, Vol. 170, 2013, pp. 237 -247. doi: 10.1144 Rifting in intra-continental areas will commonly interact with a framework of pre-existing deformed zones. Although new structures form, structural inheritance may influence the location and geometry of tectonic deformation because strained rocks can act as weak zones localizing subsequent deformation (e.g. Watterson 1975;Sykes 1978;Handy 1989;Holdsworth et al. 2001). In particular, basins along rift margins are often inferred to be influenced by pre-existing structures (e.g. Daly et al. 1989;Lee & Hwang 1993;van Wees & Beekman 2000;Scheck-Wenderoth & Lamarche 2005). The connection between basins and pre-existing structures is frequently based on the similarity of the trends of seismically imaged rift faults to basement tectonic trends observed onshore (e.g. Roberts & Holdsworth 1999;Wilson et al. 2006). However, assessing the direct relationship between rift faults and pre-existing structures is often difficult because the basement is overlain by syn-to post-rift formations. The effect of pre-existing structures on fault architecture at scales of tens to hundreds of metres is less clear. Some studies suggest that pre-existing foliations resulting from crystal-plastic deformation exert a strong influence on fault zone architecture during later deformation (e.g. Beacom et al. 2001;Butler et al. 2008). Experimental work indicates that foliated rocks are mechanically anisotropic (Donath 1964;Shea & Kronenberg 1993), suggesting that foliations impart mechanical anisotropy or planes of weakness into the country rock that may be exploited by subsequent fracturing. However, analogues for the deeper sections of rift faults are rarely exposed, and the specific impacts of mechanical anisotropy for fault structures at exposure scale are con...