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“We’re seeing a crack that in all likelihood formed over many thousands of years or hundreds of thousands of years,” Andrews told CBS.

Geologists like Andrews believe the formation of the crack is just the latest sign that Africa will likely break into two — although it might take about 50 million years for it to happen.

The split would tear Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania and half of Ethiopia away from the rest of the continent. These countries are located in what geologists refer to as the Great Rift Valley — a region spanning 6,000 km from Mozambique to the Middle East, where tectonic plates are constantly moving apart. Kenya, in particular, is located on top of an area where the Somali plate and the Nubian plate in the Earth are in the process of rifting.

The movement of the plates is stretching the Earth’s crust so thin that the area is already beginning to split apart, as evidenced by the crack that appeared last week. The northern region of Kenya will likely be the first region to break apart, University of London researcher Lucia Perez Diaz wrote in the Conversation, because it is coated with volcanic rocks.

But not all scientists are convinced the crack was the result of tectonic rifts. While geologist Wendy Bohon told CBS that she also believes Africa in the process of splitting in two, she said the formation of the crack was more likely caused by heavy rain storms.

“I think it’s an Earth fissure, the same sort of thing that you see in Arizona after heavy rain storms,” she said. “They’re the result of heavier torrential rains that come and wash away large portions of the dirt in the ground. To me it looks pretty cut and dry. It wasn’t a result of tectonics, it was the result of the weather.”