Fig. 5

Rupture lengths and return times of great Himalayan earthquakes in Nepal since 1223 AD. Rupture extents are consistent with limited macroseismic historical evidence and growing paleoseismological/morphotectonic data, as summarized in the text. A dashed yellow line delineates the possible 1344 or 1408 AD rupture trace, assuming that one of these events was a great earthquake rupturing the front all the way to Koilabas (Fig. 2b scenario A/C), while the thin red box corresponds to the extent of blind Mw 7+ events similar to that in 2015. Note that rupture termini roughly coincide with the southernmost limits of major southern Tibetan grabens and/or Indian basement highs (Bollinger et al. 2004a, b; Gahalaut and Kundu, 2012; Godin and Harris, 2014). The position in time of the gray dotted line within the gap between Kathmandu and Pokhara is model dependent, plotted visually seven centuries after 1344 and 1408 AD, and is consistent with time clustering of earthquakes rather than the full variability of trench-derived return times (850 ± 370 years (Bollinger et al., 2014))