OPINION: Splitting Africa: what happens when a continent breaks apart?
Africa is gradually breaking apart as a result of a massive upward thrust millions of years ago. Image: robas/iStockphoto Modern-day Africa was the keystone of Gondwana, the aggregated mass of southern continents that co-existed for nearly 400m years. That supercontinent has since split apart, creating the land masses we now recognise as South America, Australia, India, Madagascar, Antarctica and, of course, Africa. And now, a new study published in Nature Geosciences is shedding light on how Africa is breaking up as well. For the greater part of the Phanerozoic Eon – 500 million years ago up to the current era – the Gondwana continents shared a common history and were populated by the same plants and animals. These continents were also marked by a climatic history that indicates the changing “paleogeographic” position (location of the continents over time) of this enormous landmass – roughly twice the size of modern Eurasia. Things began to change...