Africa is slowly but surely splitting into two parts. Like any geological phenomenon, this is a very long process that will take millions of years to complete, but it will eventually make it happen Part of East Africa separate from the rest of the continentSo a new sea would likely be created between the two resulting landmasses.
This massive rupture is linked to the East African Rift System (EARS, in English), one of the largest rifts in the world that extends thousands of kilometers across several countries in Africa: Ethiopia, Kenya, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, Tanzania, Malawi and Mozambique.
This system of cracks actually demonstrates that African painting is divided into two subclasses: The smaller Somali plate and the larger Nubian plate. They are moving apart at a very slow rate, only a few centimeters per year, according to a 2004 study.
The end result will likely be that The Horn of Africa region is separate from the restIt forms a kind of large, elongated island.
A major crack happened out of nowhere in 2018
A major crack happened out of nowhere in 2018In 2018, on March 18, residents of a small town in southeastern Kenya believed they were victims of a catastrophic event. They literally saw the ground open beneath their feet, A giant crack, several kilometers long and twenty meters deep. They had never seen anything like it before.
This rift was related to the East African Rift and is evidence of how it developed.
Geologist Lucia Pérez Diaz, from the Dynamic Faults Research Group at Royal Holloway School, reported in the journal Conversation “Activity along the eastern branch of the Rift Valley, which runs through Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania, became apparent when a large fissure suddenly appeared in southwestern Kenya.”
According to Perez Diaz, this The rift It is unique on the planet because it allows you to live observe the different stages of cracking.
He writes that the most interesting rift began in the Afar region of northern Ethiopia about 30 million years ago. Since then it has spread south towards Zimbabwe, A At a rate ranging between 2.5 and 5 cm annually.
Currently, in the Afar region, the Earth’s solid outer layer, called the lithosphere, It has been reduced to the point of almost complete collapse.
When it breaks, a new ocean will begin to form, Pérez Diaz explains, “and within tens of millions of years, the sea floor will advance along the entire length of the crack.”
“As a result, the African continent will become smaller “There will be a large island in the Indian Ocean consisting of parts of Ethiopia and Somalia, including the Horn of Africa.”.
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Contact Department of the Environment: [email protected]
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