The Pernambuco fault or Pernambuco Shear Zone in northeastern Brazil is a splay fault radiating from the Transbrasiliano lineament eastwards to the coast, a major geological feature.[1]
The Pernambuco-Alagoas domain, part of the Borborema Province, is primarily made of rocks aged between 1,600 and 1,000 million years, significantly younger than the areas to the north and south.[2] The Pernambuco fault in this domain is a continuation of the Foumban Shear Zone in Cameroon, itself the western end of the Central African Shear Zone.[1] To the west, the fault splays into numerous faults along a distance of about 50 km, suggesting that the crust was weak at this point, which is on the line where South America separated from Africa around 115 million years ago.[3]