Understanding the manner in which major plate-boundary-scale faults accommodate slip is of critical importance for a wide range of issues in the Earth sciences, including the geodynamics of relative plate motions, the mechanics of storage of elastic strain energy on faults and the release of that energy during earthquakes, the steadiness and predictability of fault slip through time, and the use of geological slip-rate data in seismic hazard assessment. Previous analyses of major plate-boundary strike-slip faults have revealed a wide range of behaviors, from relatively constant slip rates spanning a range of time intervals on some faults (

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