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Africa has been gradually splitting into two, slowly creating what will be a new ocean.

While we first learned about this two decades ago, scientists have now warned that the continent will split much faster than initially anticipated.



Why is Africa splitting?

In 2005, a 35-mile long fissure took place in Ethiopia’s desert, known as the East African Rift. It marked the start of a long process in which the African plate is splitting into two tectonic plates – the Somali plate and the Nubian plate.

The crack resides on the borders of the boundaries of the African, Arabian and Somali tectonic plates and for the past 30 million years, the Arabian plate has been slowly moving away from the African continent.

This exact tectonic shift has been seen before as it is what helped create both the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden between the two connected landmasses.

Additionally, the Somali plate is also moving away from the African plate – peeling its way through the East African Rift Valley.

Geologists have noted that this complex tectonic process will make room for a totally new body of water millions of years from now.

How quickly is Africa splitting?

It was previously thought that the process would take tens of millions of years, but now with the continent dividing at a rate of half and inch per year, those estimations have sped up.

Professor Ken MacDonald, of the University of California, has revealed that he believes a new ocean will likely happen in one to five million years time.

Speaking to MailOnline, he said: “In the human life scale, you won’t be seeing many changes. You’ll be feeling earthquakes, you’ll be seeing volcanoes erupt, but you won’t see the ocean intrude in our lifetimes.”

What are scientists saying?

Professor MacDonald went onto explain what might happen is that the waters of the Indian Ocean would come in and flood what is now the East African Rift Valley.

He told the publication: “There’s slippage and faults creating earthquake activity, along with visible signs of active volcanoes.

“In recent years, the main breakthroughs have been figuring out exactly where the branches of this rift system go.”

While, Alexandra Doten, an ex-NASA and Space Force consultant, took to Instagram to explain how Eastern Africa will be its own continent in millions of years time.

“The line along the border is the African Great Lakes. These are some of the largest lakes on Earth,” she said.

“This is 25 percent of all of the unfrozen surface fresh water on the planet, and they already hold about 10 percent of all of Earth’s fish species.

“The lakes formed because Eastern Africa is separating from the rest of the continent. That Somali plate is continuing to move even further east, creating a giant rift valley right here. It keeps going.

“Eventually, Eastern Africa is going to become its new continent, separated from the rest of Africa by a new ocean.”