In Eastern Africa, the cradle of humankind is tearing apart

Eastern Africa’s Turkana Rift is both a hotbed for fossil discoveries of our earliest ancestors and a literal hotbed of volcanic activity caused by shifting tectonic plates. Now researchers have found that Earth’s underlying crust in the region has been significantly thinned, presaging Africa ’ s eventual breakup—and with that finding, the researchers offer a new perspective on how Turkana’s world-famous fossil record of human evolution came to be.

The findings were published in Nature Communications.

The research team includes Paul Betka from Western Washington University and John Rowan from the University of Cambridge.