All articles tagged with #necking
Geologists say Africa’s Turkana Rift has thinned to about 13 km and reached a necking stage, signaling a continental split into Nubian and Somali plates and the eventual formation of a new ocean. While the process will still take millions of years, the timeline is shorter than previously thought, with evidence from the Afar Depression and a Nature Communications study linking tectonic changes to fossil preservation.
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.