Dramatic cliffs and high plateaus are caused by the same wave triggered in Earth's middle layer when continents pull apart, a new study finds.
© Leisa Tyler via Getty ImagesMonks Cowl in the Great Escarpment of South Africa. This dramatic formation arose during the breakup of Gondwana, a new study shows.
As continents break up, massive cliff walls may rise near the boundaries where the crust is pulling apart. That breakup sets off a wave in
Earth's middle layer, the mantle, that slowly rolls inward over tens of millions of years, fueling the rise of plateaus, the new study found.
Scientists have long known that continental rifts triggered the rise of massive escarpments, like the cliff walls that separate the
East African Rift Valley from the Ethiopian plateau, said lead author
Thomas Gernon, a geoscientist at the University of Southampton in the U.K. And these steep cliffs sometimes fringe inland plateaus that rise from the strong, stable cores of continents, known as cratons.
But because these two landscape features usually form tens of millions to up to 100 million years apart, many scientists thought the different formations were driven by different processes, Gernon told Live Science in an email.
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