In the arid deserts of Ethiopia, a geological marvel has been quietly unfolding since 2005—a 35-mile-long fissure known as the East African Rift. Far from being a mere curiosity, this rift holds the ...

Gernon explains that kimberlites often occur during periods of significant tectonic plate rearrangements, such as the breakup ...

But life finds a way. At the time the ancestors of mammals and dinosaurs were among the survivors, repopulating all the continents after Pangea started to break up.

At the start of the period, the breakup of the supercontinent Pangaea continued and accelerated. Laurasia, the northern half, broke up into North America and Eurasia. Gondwana, the southern half ...