The African continent is splitting in two and the result will eventually be a huge new continent, leaving Africa without its Horn. The reason is a geologic rift which runs down the eastern side of the continent which will eventually be replaced with an ocean.
This phenomenon is all down to the geography that you may remember from school.
The Earth’s crust is divided into different sections called tectonic plates. Tectonic plates are the huge rocky slabs made up of the Earth’s crust and upper mantle. These massive sheets are continually being pushed around by movements in the mantle (one of the three main layers of Earth, consisting of hot, dense, semisolid rock) which is shifting millimetre by millimetre, re-shaping the Earth’s surface over millions of years.
South of the Red Sea Rift lies the massive, East African Rift. This Rift is indicative of changes happening to the plates carrying the continent as it is formed where the Earth’s crust, or outermost layer, is spreading or splitting apart.
Only recently have scientists begun to precisely figure out why these two massive chunks of land are separating by a few millimetres every year. The split is said to be occurring because of a 'superplume', a giant section of the earth’s mantle that carries heat from near the core up to the crust.
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