All articles tagged with #necking
Geologists find the Turkana Rift in East Africa is thinner than expected and has entered the necking phase, signaling that Africa will keep splitting and eventually form a new ocean over millions of years, a process linked to unusually rich fossil preservation in the region.
Scientists report that the Turkana Rift beneath East Africa has thinned to a critical point, a stage called necking that signals the continent is gradually breaking apart and could eventually form a new ocean. Center rift crust is about 13 kilometers thick, with surrounding areas over 35 kilometers, and the thinning indicates continued rifting on a timescale of millions of years. This tectonic activity also helps explain why the region preserves an unusually rich fossil record of human evolution, as subsidence and sedimentation favored fossil preservation.