Pliocene mass failure deposits mistaken as submarine tsunami backwash sediments - An example from Hornitos, northern Chile

Instead, we argue for an origin of the conspicuous unit at Hornitos as a debris flow deposit caused by an earthquake in the Andean subduction zone in northern Chile. Our re-interpretation considers the local synsedimentary tectonic background, a comparison to recent submarine tsunami sediments, and recent examples of mass wasting deposits along the Chilean margin. The increased uplift during the Pliocene caused oversteepening of the coastal scarp and entailed a contemporaneous higher frequency of seismic events that triggered slope failures and cliff collapses. The coarse clastic unit at Hornitos represents an extraordinary, potentially tsunami-generating mass wasting event that is intercalated with mass wasting deposits on a smaller scale.