The East African Rift system is the largest continental rift to have formed in the last 60 Ma and is the type-location to study continental break-up. However, still contested are the timing and tectonic mechanisms that have led to the break-up of the old, thick African plate into a series of microplates divided by a set of branching rift zones. Two recent studies offer new insights into the dynamics of the East African Rift.
Scott Jess at the University of Calgary, Canada, and colleagues further used low-temperature thermochronology and modelling of river profiles in the Rwenzori Mountains to constrain the initiation of the western branch of the East African Rift. The traditional consensus places the western branch as ~20–30 Ma younger than the eastern branch, however, the uplift rates from Rwenzori indicate the two rift branches likely initiated coevally. Thus, as the two branches initiated at the same time, the authors conclude they were likely formed via the same mechanism.
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