Page 13 - (DK) I Can’t Believe It! 2

STRANGE BUT TRUE! 11

FAST FACTS

Arabian
plate
Danakil The Arabian
Depression plate is
pulling away
African from the
plate African plate.
Afar
East triangle
African
Rift The African
plate is
African splitting into
plate two along
the East
African Rift.
The Afar triangle is a vast
low area created where
Earth’s tectonic plates are pullling
apart. The huge forces in play
as Earth’s crust is stretched
and thinned causes earthquakes
and volcanic eruptions along the
plate boundaries. The Danakil
Depression, in the north of
the triangle, owes its sulfur
lakes and active volcanoes
to these tectonic forces.

As well as fierce volcanoes and sulfur
springs, the Danakil Depression in the
Afar triangle is home to acid lakes and
occasional earthquakes. It has little to EARLIEST ANCESTORS
no rainfall and searing temperatures
day and night. For centuries local
merchants have collected salt from Fossilized remains of
the region’s salt flats, and today the our earliest ancestors
most intrepid tourists brave the have been found in
dangers to marvel at the the Afar triangle, not
otherworldly landscape. far from the Danakil
Depression. In 1974
a team working here
found the bones of
an early hominid.
Dubbed “Lucy”
(reconstruction
pictured), she is
thought to have
lived a mind-boggling
3.2 million years ago.

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