When was the great rift valley discovered

Wood and one of our guides for scale. The East African Rift System is a complicated system of rift segments which provide a modern analog to help us understand how continents break apart. It is also a great example of how many natural systems can be intertwined - this unique geological setting may have altered the local climate which may have in turn caused our ancestors to develop the skills necessary to walk upright, develop culture and ponder how such a rift came to be.

Just like the Grand Canyon, the East African Rift System should be high on any geologist's list of geologic marvels to visit. His main research interests are energy deposits, mainly gas and oil, and doing field work in rift valleys. More information on the East Africa field course can be found at www. Alex Guth is currently a PhD candidate at Michigan Tech and is looking at the effects of climate on desert varnish on the exposed flows and alluvium in the East African Rift Valley.

She assists Dr. Wood with the geology field camp. She recently produced a geologic map of the southern half of the Kenya Rift which may be found at www. Her website can be viewed at: pages. Lake Bogoria and geyser - Image copyright Alex Guth. What is the San Andreas Fault? How did the Hawaiian Islands Form? Find Other Topics on Geology.

Maps Volcanoes World Maps. Plate Tectonics Map. What Is The Moho? The East Africa Rift System. What Causes a Tsunami? Rocks: Galleries of igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rock photos with descriptions. Minerals: Information about ore minerals, gem materials and rock-forming minerals. The northern part of the system is the Jordan Rift Valley.

Millions of years ago, the Arabian Peninsula was connected to Africa. Seafloor spreading caused the Arabian and African plates to rift apart.

The Indian Ocean flooded the rift valley between the continents, creating the Red Sea. Today, Africa and Asia are connected by the triangle of the Sinai Peninsula. East African Rift. Throughout the East African Rift, the continent of Africa is splitting in two.

The African plate, sometimes called the Nubian plate, carries most of the continent, while the smaller Somali plate carries Horn of Africa. Two arms of the Afar Triple Junction continue to widen in the process of seafloor spreading—the arm extending into the Red Sea and the arm extending into the Gulf of Aden. As these rifts continue, the narrow valley created by the Gregory Rift the arm of the Afar Triple Junction located above sea level may sink low enough that the Arabian Sea will flood it.

Separated from Africa by this new strait , Horn of Africa sitting on the Somali plate would become a continental island , like Madagascar or New Zealand. The Western Rift is one of the most biodiverse regions in Africa, featuring a narrow corridor of highland forest s, snow-capped mountains, savanna s, and chains of lake s and wetland s. Rift lake s, formed as freshwater floods rift valleys, often mark rift valley systems. More than a billion years ago, for instance, the North American plate began a rifting process.

A triple junction formed in the middle of the young continent, and deep rift valley developed. Freshwater drained and collected in this rift valley, creating a lake. After millions of years, however, the rift failed. Today, the remains of that ancient rift lake, Lake Superior, rest atop one of the oldest and deepest rift valleys in the world. Lake Baikal, the rift lake over the Baikal Rift Valley in Siberia, is the deepest and oldest freshwater lake in the world.

The deepest parts of Lake Baikal are 1, meters 5, feet , and are getting deeper every year. In addition, over the past 25 million years, layers of soft sediment have accumulate d on the lakebed.

The actual floor of the rift valley is more than 5 kilometers 3 miles deep. Lake Baikal also has the largest volume of liquid freshwater in the world—a staggering 23, cubic kilometers 5, cubic miles. Although the Dead Sea is not the world's deepest lake, the deep Jordan Rift makes it the lowest land elevation on Earth.

Unlike Lake Baikal, however, the Dead Sea is not a true rift lake as it was not formed entirely by the rift beneath it. The so-called Dead Sea Transform is a geologically complex area, where tectonic plates interact in many ways.

The most famous rift lakes in the world may be the series of narrow, deep rift valleys in the East African Rift known simply as the Rift Valley lakes. The Rift Valley lakes, stretching from Ethiopia to Malawi, are sites of amazing biodiversity. Only Lake Baikal is deeper and holds more water. Like many freshwater Rift Valley lakes, Lake Tanganyika is home to hundreds of endemic species of cichlid fish.

Rift valleys are typically deep and narrow. The Afar region is home to a triple junction at the boundaries of three tectonic plates: the Nubian, Somali, and Arabian. The Great Rift Valley opens to the south, reaching over 6, kilometers into the heart of Africa. To the east stretches the Aden Ridge, an oceanic spreading ridge. All of these boundaries are spreading at rates of up to 1. This tectonic complexity means that Africa is a continent tearing itself apart.

For 30 million years, part of eastern Africa, known as the Somali plate, has been peeling away from the rest of the continent. On a map, you can trace the rifting continent by looking at the chain of lakes like Tanganyika and Nyasa Malawi that line the bottom of the Great Rift Valley.

At the same time, the Arabian plate has been moving away from Africa as the Red Sea Rift opens at a rate of around a centimeter per year. Someday the Arabian plate will stop moving as it collides with the Eurasian plate in what is now Iran, closing the Persian Gulf and becoming part of Eurasia. This volcanism is bimodal, meaning eruptions lie on the ends of the compositional spectrum. Vast lava flows of basalt intermingle with massive explosive eruptions of lava more silica rich.

These volcanoes line the Great Rift Valley. To the north, massive basaltic shield volcanoes like Erta Ale lie near the Red Sea. All of these volcanoes reveal the active rifting beneath eastern Africa. Why is this area such a hub for rifting and spreading? One explanation is that the Afar plume has been heating the region from below. This mantle plume prompted the African continent to begin to rise and split, creating rift valleys.

Much like how the North Atlantic Ocean opened 80 million years ago, there appears to be a close connection between a large mantle plume and the creation of new continental rifts and, eventually, two passive continental margins separated by seafloor spreading at ocean ridges.

Extensional divergent , collisional, and transform boundaries have been recognized for decades. How one boundary turns into another is less well understood. Geologists have long been able to identify different tectonic settings and plate boundaries. When does subduction start at a passive margin? What happens when a spreading center gets sucked into a subduction zone? A small donation would help us keep this accessible to all.

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