A New African Ocean Emerging with Spectacular Speed
Rated • 3 reviews • africa • dailygalaxy.com
From the page: It's known that new oceans form as magma forces its way into rifts between tectonic plates, but since every other such system worked - and is now under miles of ocean - we can't actually get down there for a detailed look. Instead, an international collaboration of scientists both local and abroad studied the sudden "mega-dike intrusion" (a much less scary way of saying "holy hell our country just ripped open") and found that it matches all the signs for a prototype ocean bed.
The spectacular speed is what stunned scientists: it was assumed that such events occurred slowly in smaller steps, not sudden tectonic upheavals of the kind that cut the Earth itself open in less than a week. We were wrong about that. This raises important questions, both in terms of geophysical processes which shape the Earth we live on, and for anyone living within an earthquake of such a region.

