Kilimanjaro and the rift volcanoes rise
Great volcanic cones grow along the rift, creating islands of highland habitat in a drying continent.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 420 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 500 thousand years
- Era
- Pliocene, Cenozoic
Kilimanjaro, Mount Kenya, Mount Elgon and the Virunga chain build through the late Pliocene as magma rises along and beside the rift. They matter ecologically as well as topographically: a high volcano in the tropics stacks climate zones vertically, from savanna to montane forest to alpine moorland to ice, creating isolated highland habitats that act as evolutionary islands. Kilimanjaro's glaciers, which have survived since then, are now nearly gone.