Africa’s great divide: Why the continent’s split is so exciting for science

By Jack Bantock, CNN

(CNN) — Time and time again, Hollywood has embraced an imminent apocalypse, as films like “2012” beamed the fictionalized end of the world onto the big screen.

Fortunately, the scientific logic for many such movies has been, to put it lightly, creative. The planet’s crust did not suddenly shift 14 years ago and sweep most of us away in a flurry of earthquakes, eruptions and megatsunamis.

And yet, by the time you reach the end of this sentence, Africa will have moved a little closer to splitting apart. The remote Afar region of Northern Ethiopia sits at the center of a Y-shaped rift system, along which the continent is separating to form a new ocean.

Leave your canned food on the shelf and put down the apocalypse shovel, there’s no need to make a beeline for your doomsday bunker. This is less a case of “The Day After Tomorrow” movie and more a matter of the day after a few million years.

“It can often get lost in communication,” Emma Watts, part of a research team who embarked on an extensive research project to study the area, told CNN.

“People see that and they’re like, ‘Oh no, it’s breaking apart!’ No, it’s very, very slow … I could say it until I’m blue in the face, but people still go for the clickbait title. You just have to kind of grin and bear it.”

A hellish paradise

One of the driest and hottest areas on the planet, where summer temperatures tick over 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit), the aptly-named Afar region is about as remote and hostile as could possibly be. In its Danakil Depression lies the Erta Ale volcano, home to a decades-old lava lake and locally dubbed “the gateway to hell.”

For scientists, though, it’s paradise.

That’s because it sits at the juncture of three tectonic plates — the Main Ethiopian Rift, the Gulf of Aden Rift and the Red Sea Rift — which are gradually spreading apart in a process known as continental rifting. As the plates diverge, the mantle beneath rises and, if seen through to completion, melts to form a new ocean basin.

It’s far from the only triple junction rift system on the planet and continental rifting has been occurring for billions of years, but Afar is invaluable for researchers because the process is, quite literally, taking place under their feet. By the time late-stage rifting occurs, the point at which the ocean floor has almost formed, it’s typically concealed far under the sea.

“Afar is a beautiful place because it (the new ocean floor) is not quite yet submerged,” Watts explained. “It’s giving us a window into a process that we don’t normally see.”

Fascinated by volcanoes since learning about the 1980 eruption of Washington’s Mount St. Helens while at middle school, Watts jumped at the chance to join a team studying the region as she pursued her doctorate in volcanology at the University of Southampton in southern England.

Their research, published last June, found a single, asymmetric plume rising from deep beneath Afar. Geologists had theorized its existence before, but the new findings went a step further by showing the plume to be pulsing in a pattern akin to a “heartbeat,” albeit not necessarily at a constant rhythm.

This pattern is spreading differently at each of the three rifts depending on tectonic conditions, Watts explained, evidence that the plume is dynamic and responsive to the plate above it, not static.

“Before this study, we thought the plume was simple: it came up, it was one composition,” she said.

“But we actually think it might have heterogeneities (varied characteristics) within the plume, whether that’s the amount of melt or what it’s made up of. That’s also then interplaying with that rifting rate, causing these variations.”

Time to learn

That rifting rate, Watts stresses, is extremely slow.

The Red Sea and Gulf of Aden rifts are moving at approximately 15 millimeters per year, half the speed at which fingernails grow, while the Main Ethiopian Rift is moving even slower at around 5 millimeters each year.

At that pace, it’ll be millions of years before a new ocean is formed, and it’s not guaranteed. The continental rifting process can fail, like the Midcontinent Rift that would have ripped North America apart around the Great Lakes.

That’s music to the ears of scientists, who continue to glean new discoveries from the region. The pulling apart of the plates is exposing older layers of sediment, shedding light on almost 5 million years of evolution.

A range of preserved fossils have been found in Afar, with research published in the journal Nature in January revealing the discovery of a 2.6-million-year-old fossil of an extinct human relative.

Remains of Paranthropus, given the moniker Nutcracker Man due its pronounced chewing muscles, had typically been found in southern and eastern areas of the continent like Kenya, so its existence some 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) north of any other record suggests the species was more adaptable and widespread than presumed.

“It was thought that it (Paranthropus) never dispersed this far north, either due to ecological factors or because of competition with other species present in the area,” London Natural History Museum paleontologist Dr. Fred Spoor, part of the research team, said in a press release.

“The new discovery now suggests otherwise and the assumed absence was the result of an incomplete fossil record.”

Last August, the fossilized teeth of two further kinds of hominins dating to between 2.6 and 2.8 million years ago were found in the Afar Depression, shedding new light on the coexistence of our human ancestors.

The possibilities for discovery are almost endless, with Watts hoping to add to the region’s volcanic understanding following the eruption of Afar’s long-dormant Hayli Gubbi volcano in November.

The subsequent ash cloud was so intense it smothered local grasslands and affected air travel as far away as India.

“I think often with risk in the region, we don’t know that much, because the eruptions haven’t been witnessed that frequently,” Watts said. “I would love to continue making sure that we understand those volcanoes and help move science along with what’s happening with rifts and the hazards that we get.”

“Like any science, you take one step forward and there’s still a massive path to go,” she added.

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