News > How Africa is gradually splitting into two continents and giving rise to a new ocean

How Africa is gradually splitting into two continents and giving rise to a new ocean

Africa is breaking up or “rifting” into two parts and a new ocean is being born, scientists have said. Rifting is the tearing apart of a “single tectonic plate into two or more tectonic plates separated by divergent plate boundaries”. A lowland region called the rift valley erupts where Earth’s tectonic plates move apart, noted National Geographic. These rift valleys can occur on land as well as at the bottom of the ocean.