Africa is splitting into two continents and could create vast new ocean – turning half of landmass into giant island
AFRICA has slowly been ripping apart and will one day be two separate continents, according to researchers.
In 5 to 10 million years, Africa could be split into two large land masses with a massive ocean between them, scientists say.
This is due to the movements of tectonic plates that lie deep underneath the African continent going their own ways.
For around 30 million years, the Arabian plate has been moving away from Africa, resulting in the birth of both the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
The Somali plate in eastern Africa is also moving away from the Nubian plate – these two plates are often viewed as a single (African) block.
This event is supposedly contributing to a break in east Africa called the East African Rift System (EARS).
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EARS is a continental rift zone that runs through many east African countries including Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania.
It began developing around 22–25 million years ago and is splitting the Nubian and Somalian plates at a rate of 6-7 mm per year, according to one study.
Scientists have been studying plate movements underneath Africa for several decades, but only in recent years have they gathered measurements of the continent's splitting.
And thanks to satellite measurements, scientists are seeing the slow genesis of a new ocean.
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"This is the only place on Earth where you can study how continental rift becomes an oceanic rift," Christopher Moore, a Ph.D. doctoral student at the University of Leeds, told NBC news in 2020.
When the split is complete, an ocean should form between the Somalian plate and the Nubian plate.
"The Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea will flood in over the Afar region and into the East African Rift Valley and become a new ocean, and that part of East Africa will become its own separate small continent," Ken Macdonald, a marine geophysicist and professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara. told NBC.
"We can see that oceanic crust is starting to form because it’s distinctly different from continental crust in its composition and density," Moore added.
Still, it's important to note that the future of the East African Rift is still uncertain.