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Great Rift Valley: East Africa
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The longest rift on the Earth's surface, the Great Rift Valley is a long, deep depression with steep, wall-like cliffs, extending from Jordan in southwestern Asia southward through Africa to Mozambique. The rift has a total distance of approximately 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) and an average width of 30 to 40 miles (50 to 65 kilometers). It is a continental extension of the midoceanic ridge
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The Great Rift Valley in East Africa is a 6000 mile long crack in the earth's crust caused by the spreading of tectonic plates. The Rift Valley includes a wide variety of terrain, including desert, jungle, rivers, dangerous wildlife,and volcanically active areas.
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The Great Rift Valley cuts a swath down the eastern side of the African continent. Slicing across 4,500 miles from the Dead Sea in the north to Mozambique in the south, it forms the largest visible rift on earth, although a few larger rifts lie under the waters of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. Shifting tectonic plates formed the Great Rift about 30 million years ago when the plates of Africa and Eurasia crashed together, then pulled apart and caused huge landslides to empty rock from the earth's surface deep inside its crust.
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Great Rift Valley begins at the Afar Triangle where the Red Sea enters the Gulf of Aden. It continues in the southwesterly direction, splitting into two - the Eastern Rift and the Western Rift (... called the Albertine rift).
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East Africa's Great Rift Valley is a 5,000 kilometre long fissure in the Earth's Crust running from the Red Sea in the north to Mozambique in the south. As it runs south, this crack or 'rift' varies in width from 30 to 90 kilometres and from a few hundred to a few thousand metres deep - often running far below sea level. The rocks underneath the rift valley are over 5.3 million years old.
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The Great Rift Valley separates the grass plains of East Africa from the tropical rainforests of Western Central Africa. The National Parks of Kenya’s Rift Valley, contain an excellent array of wildlife and thousands of pink flamingos can ... be seen at Lake Nakuru, which is a large saltwater lake. Lake Naivasha, which is a fresh water lake, is ideal for bird safaris and its shores are often silhouetted by the grand shapes of hippo and buffalo.
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