{"id":652660,"date":"2026-05-07T00:46:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T00:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/652660\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T00:46:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T00:46:14","slug":"africa-is-splitting-apart-faster-than-previously-thought-forming-a-new-ocean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/652660\/","title":{"rendered":"Africa is splitting apart faster than previously thought, forming a new ocean"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eastern Africa is breaking up faster than previously thought, according to new research published in [Nature Communications](https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-026-71663-x).<\/p>\n

Scientists say a 500-kilometre-wide region known as the Turkana Rift is thinning and fracturing, a process that could eventually split eastern Africa apart and help form a new ocean basin.<\/p>\n

The rift, which spans Kenya and Ethiopia, is drifting at a rate of about 4.7 mm per year.<\/p>\n

While a complete breakup will take millions of years, scientists say some early stages are visible today.<\/p>\n

Why Africa is slowly splitting apart<\/p>\n

The world\u2019s arrangement of continents is continuously changing. It was very different hundreds of millions of years ago, when Earth\u2019s land blended together to form a supercontinent<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Experts believe the world could take on a similar shape 200 million years in the future<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When tectonic plates meet, mountains form, and oceans form where they drift apart.<\/p>\n

The East African Rift System is drifting, causing a fracture between its Nubian plate, which contains much of the continent, and the smaller Somali plate that contains most of the eastern coast and Madagascar.<\/p>\n

Breakup further along than expected<\/p>\n

Researchers used seismic data to determine the thickness of the crust in the region, discovering it is only about 13 kilometres thick in the centre, far less than the 35-kilometre thickness along the edges of the rift.<\/p>\n

When a crust\u2019s thickness measures less than 15 kilometres, it enters a phase called \u201cnecking,\u201d where the odds of a continental breakup rise sharply.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve reached that critical threshold\u201d of crustal breakdown, Anne B\u00e9cel, a geophysicist at Columbia University\u2019s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and co-author of the study, said in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think this is why it is more prone to separate.\u201d<\/p>\n

The process by which Earth\u2019s crust is stretched horizontally, causing it to buckle, fracture, and release magma from below, is referred to as \u201crifting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Study lead author Christian Rowan, a PhD student in Earth and Environmental Sciences and researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said rifting in this zone is more advanced than previously recognized.<\/p>\n

How a new ocean could eventually form<\/p>\n

While the rifting has passed the theoretical point of no return for a continental breakup, the authors are quick to point out it will unfold in geological time:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will take a few million more years before necking gives way to oceanization, the next stage in rifting, when magma will surge through the cracks and create a new seafloor for water that pours in from the Indian Ocean to the north,\u201d the authors said in a statement.<\/p>\n

A fossil hotspot<\/p>\n

To date, more than 1,200 hominid fossils spanning 4 million years \u2014 about one-third of all hominid fossils found in Africa \u2014 have been discovered in the Turkana region.<\/p>\n

While the region is often thought of as a hotspot of human evolution and history, Rowan said the study may offer another explanation.<\/p>\n

\u201cFollowing widespread volcanism around 4 million years ago, necking initiated subsidence of the Turkana Rift, where fine-grained sediments favourable for fossil preservation rapidly accumulated,\u201d the authors said in a statement.<\/p>\n

This may have created what Rowan called the \u201cright conditions\u201d to preserve a continuous fossil record.<\/p>\n

Rowan said the theory could help other researchers examine how tectonic processes, climate, and shifting plates may have influenced human evolution.<\/p>\n

Header photo: West Turkana, courtesy of Christian Rowan<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eastern Africa is breaking up faster than previously thought, according to new research published in [Nature Communications](https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-026-71663-x). Scientists…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":652661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[49,48,237950,242139,242138,8690,242140,66],"class_list":["post-652660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-continental-breakup","tag-east-african-rift-system","tag-eastern-africa","tag-nature-communications","tag-ocean-basin","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/652661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}