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Africa Is Breaking Apart Faster Than Scientists Thought. Now What?

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This story is a good-news, bad-news situation.

According to a study published in Nature Communications, the bad news is that part of eastern Africa is slowly tearing itself away from the rest of the continent. Even worse, it’s further along than scientists thought. The “sooner than expected” part needs context, though. We’re still talking hundreds of thousands to millions of years, not something that will ruin your upcoming Kenyan safari tour.

Specifically, the region in question here is the Turkana Rift, a 500-kilometer stretch across Kenya and Ethiopia where tectonic plates are pulling apart. Using seismic imaging, researchers found that the Earth’s crust there is only about 13 kilometers thick at its center, compared to over 35 kilometers nearby. That thinning is........

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