Continental Rifting

A rift is a linear zone where the lithosphere is being pulled apart and is an example of extensional tectonics.

The Danakil Depression is a geological depression formed by rifting.

This rift began when East Africa, impelled by currents in the mantle, began separating from the rest of Africa, moving to the northeast.

The South China Sea opened around 45 million years ago when the "Dangerous Ground" rifted away from southern China.

Seismic surveys indicate that rifting began in the Western Black Sea in the Barremian and Aptian followed by the formation of oceanic crust 20 million years later in the Santonian.

Third, the opening of the main East African Rift and the Albertine Rift downwarped the area between them as the rift walls rose, creating the current Lake Victoria basin.

It is the largest rift lake in Africa and the second-largest freshwater lake by volume in the world.

The Caribbean Sea is estimated to be 160 million to 180 million years old and formed when a horizontal fracture in Pangaea split the supercontinent during the Mesozoic Era.

In New Mexico, the river flows through the Rio Grande rift from one sediment-filled basin to another, cutting canyons between the basins and supporting a fragile bosque ecosystem on its flood plain.

It is a rift valley lake lying in the Lake Mweru-Luapula graben, which is a branch of the East African Rift.

The region is located along the Red Sea Rift.

The opening of the Great Rift Valley split the dome of the Ethiopian Highlands into three parts; the mountains of the southern Arabian Peninsula are geologically part of the ancient Ethiopian Highlands, separated by the rifting which created the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden and separated Africa from Arabia.

Spreading within the Gulf of California consists of short oblique rifts or ridge segments connected by long northwest trending transform faults, which together comprise the Gulf of California Rift Zone.

Peninsulas can be formed by continental drift, glacial erosion, glacial meltwater, glacial deposition, marine sediment, marine transgressions, volcanoes, divergent boundaries or river sedimentation.

The lake lies in this long-extinct Mesoproterozoic rift valley, the Midcontinent Rift.

A rift valley is a linear shaped lowland between several highlands or mountain ranges produced by the action of a geologic rift.

Lake Baikal is a rift lake and the deepest lake in the world.

It lies in the endorheic basin of the Jordan Rift Valley, and its main tributary is the Jordan River.

Lake Malawi, also known as Lake Nyasa in Tanzania and Lago Niassa in Mozambique, (Swahili: Ziwa Nyasa) is an African Great Lake and the southernmost lake in the East African Rift system, located between Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania.

It is underlain by the Red Sea Rift, which is part of the Great Rift Valley.

The gulf was formed within a relatively young but now inactive Gulf of Suez Rift rift basin, dating back about 26 million years.

Lake Turkana () is a saline lake in the Kenyan Rift Valley, predominantly in northern Kenya; the far northern end crosses into Ethiopia.

It lies on the border between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, and is in the Albertine Rift, the western branch of the East African Rift.

It is one of a few rivers in India that flows in a rift valley, bordered by the Satpura and Vindhya ranges.

It is located in the Albertine Rift, the western branch of the East African Rift, on the border between the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda, with its northern shore a few kilometres south of the equator.

Lake Nakuru is one of the Rift Valley lakes, located at an elevation of 1,754 m (5,755 ft) above sea level.

Lake Balaton (Hungarian: [ˈbɒlɒton] ) is a freshwater rift lake in the Transdanubian region of Hungary.

Between 56 and 23 million years ago, the peninsula was formed as a result of the Red Sea Rift involving the African and Arabian plates.

The Albertine Rift and the mountains are the result of tectonic movements that are gradually splitting the Somali Plate away from the rest of the African continent.

Shaped by global plate tectonic forces that have created the East African Rift, East Africa is the site of Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya, the two tallest peaks in Africa.