In the future, a new continent could emerge and with it a new ocean. Because Africa is slowly dividing into two parts.
According to IFLScience, it is a long and extreme process that will take millions of years and will lead to the disintegration of part of West Africa.
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Why is Africa splitting?
- This situation is related to the East African Rift System (EARS);
- It is one of the largest fissures in the world, extending thousands of kilometers deep into the earth and crossing several African countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya, Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, Tanzania, Malawi and Mozambique.
- This gap suggests that Africa is dividing into two parts (the smaller Somali plate and the larger Nubian plate), which are separating from each other at a “superslow snail's pace,” according to a 2004 study;
- Back in 2018, reports of a rift in Kenya went viral, with many claiming this was evidence of Africa being split in two;
- Although such a scenario was related to the EARS, it is somewhat misleading to portray it as real evidence of the continent's great separation;
- However, this was probably just a highly localized expression of regular fission activity in the valley.
The EARS has been in this current process for about 25 million years and the rift in Kenya already foreshadowed what was happening on the continent.
However, changes in the EARS could cause the world to look drastically different in five to ten million years.
Around this time we will likely see the formation of a new ocean between the Somali Plate and the Nubian Plate. The great African continent will lose its eastern slope and the vast sea will isolate East Africa.
It should be remembered that the earth's surface is subject to constant change; it is so slow that human experience cannot explain it.
The appearance of the world as we know it is relatively new. The land and sea we see today are the product of huge tectonic plates that fit together like a puzzle. However, these puzzle pieces move very slowly on a time scale of millions of years.
Just think of the division that the Earth experienced about 138 million years ago, when South America and Africa were divided. If you look at the west coast of Africa and the east coast of South America, you will see that they fit together like two pieces of a puzzle, revealing how these continents were once assembled into a whole.