Projection of the Monte Maggiore unit in the Wadati-Benioff seismic zone of a cold subduction setting such as the Pacific plate subducting beneath NE Japan. A. General setting (isotherms after Hacker et al. [2003] and Peacock [2001]). B. Detailed setting. The rectangle stands for the location of the Cima di Gratera and Monte Maggiore pseudotachylyte occurrences. Hypocenters (background circles) and kinematics (red arrows) of the 2002–2003 seismic activity in the uppermost part of the Pacific plate off NE Japan (Hasegawa et al., 2007) are given for comparison (see Magott et al. [2016] for further details).