Overview
- Researchers report in Nature Communications that the Turkana Rift in Kenya and Ethiopia is in a necking phase, a stage where the crust narrows and weakens at its center.
- Seismic imaging shows the crust is about 13 kilometers thick at the rift’s core and more than 35 kilometers on the flanks, a sharp contrast that marks advanced thinning.
- Necking makes further rifting easier, yet scientists say oceanization, when new seafloor forms and water can flood in, remains millions of years away.
- The team proposes that subsidence and rapid burial by fine sediments helped preserve more than 1,200 hominin fossils in the region over the past 4 million years.
- The findings draw on rare, high‑quality seismic data gathered with industry partners and the Turkana Basin Institute, and they note an earlier failed rift that left the crust weaker as the African and Somali plates separate at about 4.7 millimeters per year.