Re: Tectonic News

[Dora Smith <villandra@austin.rr.com>]

Interesting.  Thanks for telling us this.

But I didn't get it wrong by guessing that what's going on in Ethipia 
isn't a new rift and could have something to do with the Rift Valley!

Yours,
Dora Smith
Austin, TX
villandra@austin.rr.com



tholtz@geol.umd.edu wrote:

> > Folks, this article says a rift created in northern Ethiopia by a recent
> > earthquake is the beginning of continental rifting.
> >
> > I don't think so.  That would take more than a single minor fault!
> >
> > And the Rift Valley is a failed continental rift.   It runs to that
> > region.   Occasionally tectonic activity happens along those old failed
> > rifts.
> >
> >    
>
> The hypothesis that the Rift Valley is a failed rift is outdated. Numerous
> lines of research in the 1990s, including work using GPS readings, has
> demonstrated that it is still active, and that the Ethiopian section of
> Africa (aka the Ethiopian Plate) is headed eastward relative to the rest
> of Africa at rates comparable to those of other divergent boundaries. So,
> cool news of the manifestation of the latest rip in the Rift Valley!
>
>                Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
>        Senior Lecturer, Vertebrate Paleontology
> Department of Geology           Director, Earth, Life & Time Program
> University of Maryland          College Park Scholars
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>                College Park, MD  20742
>
> http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/
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>
>
>