Abstract
EIGHT new heat flow measurements from Precambrian sites in the Republic of Zambia (Fig. 1) range between 55 and 76 mW m−2. Compared with the mean for Precambrian provinces elsewhere, these results are anomalously high by some 50%. This heat flow anomaly persists after taking into account radioactive heat generation of near surface rocks, and therefore may be interpreted as indicating the presence of anomalously warm material only a few tens of kilometres beneath the Earth's crust. We believe these observations support the hypothesis of an incipient arm of the East African rift system as proposed by Fairhead and Girdler1,2 and suggest that it may extend into the central African plateau to at least 16°S.
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References
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CHAPMAN, D., POLLACK, H. Heat flow and incipient rifting in the Central African Plateau. Nature 256, 28–30 (1975). https://doi.org/10.1038/256028a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/256028a0
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