A fault line on the Canadian border, thought to be dormant for tens of millions of years, could cause a major earthquake, a new study has revealed.

The Tintina fault stretches about 600 miles from northeastern British Columbia into Alaska. It was previously thought to have last been active around 40 million years ago.

But a study published in Geophysical Research Letters earlier this month found signs of more recent activity.

New topographic data collected from satellites, airplanes and drones showed about an 80-mile-long segment of the fault where 2.6 million-year-old and 132,000-year-old geological formations are laterally shifted across the fault.