Apollo 17 Oblique

In the lower right, South Massif casts a long evening shadow across the mare basalt flooded Taurus Littrow valley. Note the sharp boundary of the flat mare against the slopes of the Sculptured Hills in the background, similar to a lake shoreline, revealing the very fluid nature of the lava when it filled the valley. Your eye is drawn to the sharp line snaking across the bottom of the image. Note how this ridge traverses across the valley floor and up onto the lower slopes of North Massif (lower left). Astonishingly this feature is a large, young fault: imagine the ground in the foreground being pushed to the east and the crust buckling, a whole section was pushed up and onto the back side of the fault (low angle thrust fault).