Q 01/05

In its original definition, the Great Rift Valley runs from northern Syria to which African country?

A) Angola

B) Zimbabwe

C) Mozambique

D) South Africa

Answer · why

C) Mozambique

Mozambique: the rift has been tearing open for millions of years, and the volcanic activity along it built Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya, Africa's two h...

Q 02/05

Which British geologist introduced the term Great Rift Valley in 1896?

A) Charles Lyell

B) Joseph Thomson

C) Arthur Holmes

D) John Walter Gregory

Answer · why

D) John Walter Gregory

John Walter Gregory coined it as the title of his 1896 book about a journey to Mount Kenya and Lake Baringo. Still exploring at 68, he drowned when hi...

Q 03/05

A rift valley is a long, steep-sided valley that has done what?

A) Been carved out by a glacier

B) Been blasted open by a volcano

C) Dropped between a series of faults

D) Been eroded by a great river

Answer · why

C) Dropped between a series of faults

Dropped between a series of faults: as the crust is stretched, a block of land sinks between parallel fractures, so the valley is made by collapse fro...

Q 04/05

The East African Rift is slowly splitting the African plate into which two plates?

A) Saharan and Kalahari

B) Somali and Nubian

C) Congo and Zambezi

D) Ethiopian and Swahili

Answer · why

B) Somali and Nubian

Somali and Nubian: as the two plates part, the small Victoria plate caught between them is being turned anticlockwise, the opposite way to its neighbo...

Q 05/05

If the East African Rift keeps widening, what is expected to form between its two sides?

A) A new ocean

B) A new mountain range

C) A new desert

D) A new delta

Answer · why

A) A new ocean

A new ocean: the sides part by only a few millimetres a year, so the sea is millions of years away, yet in Ethiopia's Danakil Depression the rift floo...