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John Tuzo Wilson introduced transform faults as a distinct type of boundary needed to connect seafloor spreading and other relative plate motions. Where two spreading-ridge segments are offset, active sliding occurs on the connecting part of the fracture; its continuation beyond a ridge can separate crust moving together and need not remain an active plate boundary. The geometry predicts a slip direction that cannot be inferred merely by treating the offset ridge as a formerly continuous line. His 1965 proposal made a structural pattern into a test of plate tectonics.^[ref]

A geophysicist associated with transform faults and the Wilson cycle.