Seismic data from the Turkana Depression in East Africa show that areas of thinned lithosphere are not necessarily persistent weak zones where extension and magmatic provinces will develop.

One of the seismic stations in the Turkana Depression

Where in the world do earthquakes pose the greatest risk? Japan, perhaps...or California? When devastating earthquakes hit the news headlines, they implant themselves in our memory, and we create a long-lasting association between the location and the event. But what about the earthquakes that lie outside of living memory? Are the locations of these events perceived to hold the same degree of risk? In this film, Professor Richard Walker and Dr Neill Marshall from Oxford's Department of Earth Sciences share their work on the forgotten earthquakes of Central Asia, and explain the societal implications of natural disasters that have faded into the past.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...