*Africa’s tectonic activity is allegedly splitting the continent, potentially creating a new ocean in about 50 million years.
This process echoes Earth’s historical shifts, including the breakup of the ancient supercontinent Pangea around 230 million years ago, Indy 100 reports. Evidence of these massive continental shifts is found in fossils, like those of the Cynognathus, a prehistoric creature whose remains are located only in Africa and South America, indicating these regions were once connected.
According to National Geographic, the East African Rift System (EARS) showcases this tectonic activity, extending across several African countries, including Kenya, Ethiopia, and Tanzania. Over the past 25 million years, a significant crack has formed here, slowly dividing the African plate into two segments: the Nubian and the Somalian plates. This rift will eventually widen, allowing oceanic waters to fill the gap and forming a new ocean.
“The valley has a history of tectonic and volcanic activities,” geologist David Adede told the Daily Nation at the time “Whereas the rift has remained tectonically inactive in the recent past, there could be movements deep within the Earth’s crust that have resulted in zones of weakness extending all the way to the surface.”
“Given the evidence available at present, the best and simplest explanation is that this crack was in fact formed by erosion of soil beneath the surface due to recent heavy rains in Kenya,” Stephen Hicks, a seismology researcher at the University of Southampton, wrote in The Guardian.
Researcher Lucía Pérez Díaz noted in The Conversation that “Questions remain as to why it has formed in the location that it did and whether its appearance is at all connected to the ongoing East African Rift.
“For example, the crack could be the result of the erosion of soft soils infilling an old rift-related fault.”
National Geographic writes, “Eventually, the Somali plate may completely separate from the Nubian plate and form a separate land mass comparable to Madagascar or New Zealand. Fortunately for those who live there, that separation isn’t expected to happen for another 50 million years. It does mean, however, that the physical effects of that separation will continue to be felt.”
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