| Volcanic
"The physical fact of Africa is by far the most exciting and interesting thing about it." Africa is an extremely old continent. Some say it is as old as 4,000 million years, older than Europe or North America. You can see the age from the air, the millions of years of weathering have torn down mountains and turned much of Africa into a series of endless, rolling plains and hills. One of the exceptions to this is the very geologically active East African Rift, with the Rift valley and volcanoes that it produced. The East African Rift is the place where two plates are moving away from each other. The resulting cracks have produced both the very dramatic Rift Valley and the volcanoes on either side of it. Kilimanjaro, Mt. Kenya, Mt. Meru and Ngorongoro are a few of the best-known examples of the Rift's volcanoes. These volcanoes are relatively young, and one is still active today, as are hot springs and steam vents within Ngorongoro. As these volcanoes erupted, they covered the eastern parts of Serengeti with ash and larger particles. The soils of the Serengeti Plains are derived from this volcanic ash. |