As per The Conversation, it divides the African plate into two parts: the Somali and Nubian plates. Spanning over 3,000km, the East African Rift Valley lies from the Gulf of Aden in the north towards Zimbabwe in the south. The crack was discovered at the border of three tectonic plates – African Nubian, African Somali, and Arabian – that have already been separating for some time, the Economic Times report added. The seismic data present in the research shows that the creation of the rift was triggered by similar tectonic processes that are taking place at the bottom of the ocean. This will set off the formation of a new sea, as per a report in Economic Times. The splitting up of the continent is linked to East African Rift, a 56 kilometres or 35-mile-long crack that emerged in Ethiopia’s desert in 2005. This phenomenon can be dated at least 138 million years back when South America and Africa were divided into different continents, says IFLScience report.įor the last 30 million years, the Arabian plate has been drifting away from Africa, a process that resulted in the creation of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, according to NBC News. ![]() These rift valleys can occur on land as well as at the bottom of the ocean. According to Science Direct, rifting is the tearing apart of a “single tectonic plate into two or more tectonic plates separated by divergent plate boundaries”.Ī lowland region called the rift valley erupts where Earth’s tectonic plates move apart, noted National Geographic.
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