BATON ROUGE — Almost 2,500 miles from the nation's west coast, seismometers at LSU detected shocks from a 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Northern California on Thursday.

An LSU spokesperson said that on-campus instruments were able to detect a brief spike in seismographic activity caused by the California earthquake.

The U.S. Geological Survey told the Associated Press that the quake struck at 10:44 a.m. Pacific — 12:44 p.m. Central — west of Ferndale, a small city in coastal Humboldt County, about 130 miles from the Oregon border. It was felt as far south as San Francisco, some 270 miles away; the area was placed under a brief tsunami warning after the quake and its aftershocks.

Researchers emphasized that the quake was "not felt by people or animals here, only by very sensitive instruments like seismometers."

"Their data shows how subtle earthquake waves travel around the whole globe," LSU spokesman Zach Labbe said.