The Geology of Africa for Dummies

African Plate

As they patrol the internet in search of dumbassery published solely in the interests of income, our research staffers return time and time again to well-trodden paths. In other words, they plug certain words, names, or websites into their search engines and punch the "search" button. Happily, it's remarkably easy to find some of this rubbish; sadly, many of the people who read it don't know it's rubbish. We have to wonder if the authors, people like Sciencing.com's Chris Burke, even realize that stuff like "Facts About the African Plate"¹ is rubbish (we know it...).

Burke, a moonlighting law student, took some time away from the Paper Chase to pen this particular glop (and help pay for his Starbucks Frappuccino). Our staffer recognized it for the rubbish it is from a single statement:

"Tectonic plates float on top of the hot liquid magma of the Earth’s mantle like chunks of ice on a lake..."

...and noticed that everything went downhill from there. Chris found himself an outdated discussion of the African tectonic plate written by a retired professor at a small regional university, and managed to misconstrue, misinterpret, mis-word, and just plan miss the point of most of it. Here's some of the crap he said, with corrections:

Africa has three divergent boundaries. Well, yeah, sure. It also has a convergent boundary on the north (which Burke failed to mention) that is far more important than the divergent boundary between Africa and Antarctica: it's the cause of volcanism and earthquakes in Italy, for instance Geologists debate whether [the East African Rift] means that Africa is in fact composed of two plates, or if the African plate itself is splitting into two pieces. We aren't sure where he got that crap. Perhaps it's a misunderstanding of the presence of a triple junction that has separated east Africa into three sub-plates: Africa, Somali, and Arabian.

While people generally consider the island of Sicily, just off the coast of the Italian Peninsula, to be European, it is in fact a part of the African plate. The African plate itself contains large pieces of the Mediterranean Sea as well as the Atlantic Ocean, and Sicily forms the boundary of Africa’s Mediterranean sea plate. Ain't no such thing as a "Mediterranean sea plate." The Mediterranean is a remnant of an old ocean combined with a series of forearc basins, Chris. Maybe mentioning that the Mediterranean was once an empty valley would have been interesting? Many parts of the world were once a part of the African plate but have since split off. The Arabian Peninsula split from Africa, creating the Red Sea in the process. Spain also was once a part of the African plate but joined the European plate after splitting from Africa. At one time, Madagascar was a separate plate, although plate dynamics have shifted and Madagascar has since attached itself to the African plate. Well, heck, Chris: you forgot to mention Florida...

Burke's unfamiliarity with basic tectonics and geological history made him completely unqualified to write this particular post, yet he did so for the express purpose of padding his PayPal account. As far as we're concerned at the Antisocial Network, that's the chief criterion for receiving the Dumbass of the Day award.

¹ The original has been sent to the cleanup crew by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   http://sciencing.com/african-plate-8667337.html

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