It has been recognized that the continents do not deform like the oceans and continental deformation represents a significant departure from the kinematic rules of plate tectonics (England & McKenzie, 1982;Tapponnier & Molnar, 1976). However, the kinematics and dynamics of continental tectonics are still unclear. Despite decades of study, large continental earthquakes continue to surprise us, for example, by occurring in unexpected locations (e.g., the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquake sequence, Ross et al., 2019), or exhibiting remarkable complexity (e.g., the 2016 M W 7.8 Kaikoura earthquake, Hamling et al., 2017). On 21 May 2021, a strong (M W ∼ 7.4) earthquake (referred to here as the Maduo earthquake) hit Maduo County in eastern Tibetan Plateau, rupturing a fault away from the main crustal block boundaries hypothesized for this region. We measure and model the coseismic,

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