Will the East African Rift split the continent and create a new ocean, or will it fizzle out?
A giant rift is slowly tearing Africa, the second-largest continent, apart. This depression — known as the East African Rift — is a network of valleys that stretches about 2,175 miles long, from the Red Sea to Mozambique, according to the Geological Society of London.
The Somalian and Nubian plates are also separating from the Arabian plate in the north. These plates intersect in the Afar region of Ethiopia, creating a Y-shaped rift system, the Geological Society of London noted.A slow breakThe East African Rift started forming about 35 million years ago between Arabia and the Horn of Africa in the eastern part of the continent, Cynthia Ebinger, chair of geology at Tulane University in New Orleans and a science adviser to the U.S.
"The rifting right now is very slow, about the rate that one's toenails grow," Ken Macdonald, a distinguished professor emeritus of Earth science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told Live Science.
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