Erosion and tectonics in the East African Rift System

Abstract

From consideration of the Karroo and Jurassic structures within the Rift Zone it is suggested that major folding that took place in later Jurassic time raised locally to great height the resistant pre-Karroo complex, out of which, in successive cycles, the high-level residual plateaux have been carved. In general, throughout the Rift Zone the surviving larger tracts of Karroo and Jurassic sediments still occupy low-lying areas representing the original major synclines, but in some cases trough-faulting that succeeded the folding carried down into the elevated areas strips of sediments which were subsequently eroded to form ancestral " rifts "; within these " rifts " much of the Pleistocene rifting took place and thus formed narrow lake basins within an ancient topography.