The East African Rift is an active continental rift zone in East Africa that appears to be a developing divergent tectonic plate boundary. In the past it was considered to be part of a larger Great Rift Valley that extended north to Asia Minor. The rift is a narrow zone in which the African Plate is in the process of splitting into two new tectonic plates called the Somali Plate and the Nubian Plate, which are subplates or protoplates.
Read more about East African Rift: Extent, Volcanic Activity, Discoveries in Human Evolution
Famous quotes containing the words east and/or african:
“From the east to western Inde,
No jewel is like Rosalind.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The African race evidently are made to excel in that department which lies between the sensuousness and the intellectual—what we call the elegant arts. These require rich and abundant animal nature, such as they possess; and if ever they become highly civilised, they will excel in music, dancing and elocution.”
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896)