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The Red Sea Rift is a mid-ocean ridge between two tectonic plates, the African plate and the Arabian plate. It extends from the Dead Sea Transform fault system, and ends at an intersection with the Aden Ridge and the East African Rift , forming the Afar triple junction in the Afar Depression of the Horn of Africa .
The East African Rift follows the Red Sea to the end before turning inland into the Ethiopian highlands, dividing the country into two large and adjacent but separate mountainous regions. In Kenya, Uganda, and the fringes of South Sudan, the Great Rift runs along two separate branches that are joined to each other only at their southern end, in ...
It is underlain by the Red Sea Rift, which is part of the Great Rift Valley. The Red Sea has a surface area of roughly 438,000 km 2 (169,000 sq mi), [1] is about 2,250 km (1,400 mi) long, and 355 km (221 mi) wide at its widest point. It has an average depth of 490 m (1,610 ft), and in the central Suakin Trough it reaches its maximum depth of ...
Manda-Hararo rift in the Afar region of Ethiopia with Dabbahu Volcano in the background. The Red Sea Rift is between the African (or Nubian) and Arabian plates. The rift runs along the length of the Red Sea, starting from the Dead Sea to the Afar triple junction. Within the rift, in the Red Sea, there are many volcanoes, including the Jabal al ...
Geologists predict that in about 10 million years the whole 6,000 km (3,700 mi) length of the East African Rift will be submerged, forming a new ocean basin as large as today's Red Sea, and separating the Somali plate and the Horn of Africa from the rest of the continent. [9] The floor of the Afar Depression is composed of lava, mostly basalt.
Along its northeast margin, the African plate is bounded by the Red Sea Rift where the Arabian plate is moving away from the African plate. The New England hotspot in the Atlantic Ocean has probably created a short line of mid- to late-Tertiary age seamounts on the African plate but appears to be currently inactive. [5]
The Afromontane archipelago mostly follows the East African Rift from the Red Sea to Zimbabwe, with the largest areas in the Ethiopian Highlands, the Albertine Rift Mountains of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Tanzania, and the Eastern Arc highlands of Kenya and Tanzania.
The rifting of Gondwana occurred from 190 Ma to 47 Ma separating Madagascar from the eastern coast of Africa and placing the Seychelles/Mascarene Plateau northeast of Madagascar. [4] [5] The rifting of the Red Sea started around and the first rifting occurred in the northern West African Rift System around 6]