![]() The lengths and displacements of the great strike-slip faults range in the hundreds of kilometers. Major strike-slip faults form in regional belts of simple shear, typically parallel to orogenic belts indeed, recognition of the role strike-slip faults play in ancient orogenic belts is becoming increasingly commonplace as regional mapping becomes more detailed and complete. Fault lengths are generally less than 100 km, and displacements along them are measurable in a few to tens of kilometers. Conjugate sets of strike-slip faults form in pure shear, typically across the strike of a convergent orogenic belt. A mechanical understanding of strike-slip faults has grown out of laboratory model studies which give a theoretical basis to relate faulting to concepts of pure shear or simple shear. Each class of faults may be subdivided further according to their plate or intraplate tectonic function. Strike-slip faults are classified either as transform faults which cut the lithosphere as plate boundaries, or as transcurrent faults which are confined to the crust. ![]() Extrapolation from observed horizontal displacements during single earthquakes to more abstract concepts of long-term, slow accumulation of hundreds of kilometers of horizontal translation over geologic time, however, came almost simultaneously from several parts of the world, but only after much regional geologic mapping and synthesis. ![]() The importance of strike-slip faulting was recognized near the turn of the century, chiefly from investigations of surficial offsets associated with major earthquakes in New Zealand, Japan, and California.
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