![\"West](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/west-turkana.png\")
<\/p>\nScientists have found signs Africa is witnessing the birth of a new ocean as the continent appears to be splitting.<\/p>\n
Researchers have determined the Earth’s crust beneath East Africa’s Turkana Rift is thinning at a far more advanced rate than scientists previously recognised, signalling the continent is splitting apart more rapidly than earlier estimates suggested.<\/p>\n
The findings reveal this geological zone, spanning approximately 300 miles across Kenya and Ethiopia, has entered a crucial phase known as “necking” \u2014 a stage that could ultimately result in the formation of a new ocean millions of years in the future.<\/p>\n
“We found that rifting in this zone is more advanced, and the crust is thinner, than anyone had recognised,” says Christian Rowan, lead author of the study and a doctoral student at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. <\/p>\n
“Eastern Africa has progressed further in the rifting process than previously thought.”<\/p>\n
The necking phenomenon describes how the crust stretches and narrows in its centre, much like the thinned middle portion that forms when pulling apart a piece of saltwater taffy.<\/p>\n
Measurements from the study reveal a stark contrast in crustal thickness across the region. At the rift’s centre, the crust measures merely 8 miles deep, whilst areas further from the central zone exceed more than 20 miles.<\/p>\n
This thinning creates a self-reinforcing cycle. “The thinner the crust gets, the weaker it becomes, which helps promote continued rifting,” Mr Rowan explains.<\/p>\n
Researchers have found the Earth’s crust beneath East Africa’s Turkana Rift is thinning at a far more advanced rate then thought <\/p>\n
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CHRISTIAN ROWAN<\/p>\n
Anne B\u00e9cel, a geophysicist at Lamont and study co-author, confirms the significance of these findings. “We’ve reached that critical threshold of crustal breakdown,” she says. <\/p>\n
“We think this is why it is more prone to separate.”<\/p>\n
These geological transformations unfold across vast stretches of time. <\/p>\n
The Turkana Rift first began opening roughly 45 million years ago, with the necking phase commencing following extensive volcanic eruptions approximately 4 million years ago.<\/p>\n
![\"Turkana](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/turkana-rift-remains.png\")
The Turkana Rift has yielded an extraordinary collection of ancient human remain<\/p>\n
| <\/p>\n
JOHN ROWAN<\/p>\n
The African and Somali plates are currently drifting apart at a rate of about 4.7 millimetres annually.<\/p>\n
Scientists estimate that the subsequent stage, termed oceanisation, remains millions of years away. <\/p>\n
When that phase eventually arrives, magma will push through the fractured crust to create new seafloor, and waters from the Indian Ocean could ultimately flow into the newly formed basin.<\/p>\n
The research team also identified evidence of a previous rifting episode that failed to fully divide the continent. That earlier event nonetheless weakened and thinned the crust, preparing conditions for the current activity.<\/p>\n
The discoveries also illuminate why the Turkana Rift has yielded such an extraordinary collection of ancient human remains. The region has produced over 1,200 hominin fossils spanning the past 4 million years, representing roughly one third of all such specimens found across Africa.<\/p>\n
The researchers propose the onset of necking caused the land within the rift to subside. This sinking created conditions where fine-grained sediments accumulated rapidly, circumstances ideal for fossil preservation.<\/p>\n
“The conditions were right to preserve a continuous fossil record,” says Mr Rowan.<\/p>\n
This interpretation suggests the Turkana Rift may not have been a uniquely significant location for human evolution itself, but rather a place where geological circumstances happened to record that history exceptionally well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists have found signs Africa is witnessing the birth of a new ocean as the continent appears to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":552642,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[59,50,90,56,54,55,231],"class_list":["post-552641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-gb","tag-news","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/552642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}