Scientists Reveal That New Ocean Will Form In Africa As Continent Splits In Two

Earth. True colour satellite image of the Earth, centred on Africa. North is at top. Water is blue, vegetation is green, arid areas are brown, and snow and ice are white. Both land and ocean floor topography are shown. The terrain of Africa varies from rock and sand (grey and brown) in the Sahara in North Africa, to tropical rainforests (dark green) in Western and Central Africa, to savannah and plains (brown and green) in southern and eastern Africa. Surrounding Africa (clockwise from top) is Europe and the Mediterranean, the Arabian Peninsula, the Indian Ocean and the island of Madagascar, and the Atlantic Ocean. At the edge of the globe are India (upper right), Antarctica (bottom), South America (lower left) and Greenland (top). The image used data from LANDSAT 5 & 7 satellites. Print size 42x42cm., Globe Africa, True Colour Satellite Image (Photo by Planet Observer/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

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Scientists Reveal That New Ocean Will Form In Africa As Continent Splits In Two

Not only are we currently going through a pandmeic, but the shape of the earth as we know it is changing too.

According to scientists, the East African Rift, which is made up of the western and eastern continental rifts, from Ethiopia down to Mozambique is splitting at 7mm annually. Volcanic eruptions and the movement of tectonic plates may eventually  form a new ocean that splits Africa up. Countries such as Uganda and Zambia will get their own coastline.

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According to Nature Journal, “the Victoria microplate, the largest of its kind on Earth, has been rotating counter-clockwise for the last two years. With respect to all of the other plates on the continent, including the main African plate, the Victoria microplate is turning in the opposite direction. This anomaly could indeed accelerate the rift’s separation.”

This is nothing new, over 200 million years ago, when dinosaurs lived on the planet, Earth’s continents were joined together in a single landmass called Pangaea. As time passed, bug rifts opened within that one supercontinent, causing it to break and create seven new continents. Africa’s splitting material take a similar amount of time.

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