In what sounds like a plot straight from the sci-fi bestseller or film, a recent article published in the American Journal of Science, depicts that, 200 million years from now, the east Africa region, which will include Somalia, Tanzania, Mozambique and Kenya and Madagascar, will join India. That is not all this will result in a mountain range “Somalaya” that will run along India’s west coast.

This study was done by a group of geologists at the Netherlands’ Utrecht University led by Prof. Douwe J.J. van Hinsbergen.

Talking to indianexpress.com, the Professor said: “I had made reconstructions of the past – of a continent that disappeared in the Mediterranean region, another major continent that disappeared in Southeast Asia whose relics we find all over Indonesia. But I had never made any future simulations. But the question caught my attention and I discussed it with my student and after about two years we now have an answer.”

There will be several major changes in the geography of the region as the team stated that Mauritius and Seychelles islands will be forced to go up with Mumbai lying at the foot of the new Somalaya range.

Dr. Hinsbergen explained: “You will get a depression in southwest India, from Trivandrum all the way to Karachi. And the Horn of Africa which includes Somalia will override or bulldoze over southwest India and make this big mountain belt.”

Sharing the details of how the study was conducted with indianexpress.com, Thomas Schouten, one of the authors of the study, and a PhD student at ETH Zürich, Switzerland, said: “We have so many studies that have reconstructed the past, for which we have knowledge on how tectonic plates moved – how fast, which way they went etc. In our study, we assumed that the rift that goes through the African continent and underlies the east African lakes will continue to split the two parts of Africa and an ocean will be formed in the next 200 million years.”

Following this creation of space in Africa, space in the Indian Ocean will get removed. “So basically the beaches of Malabar will be scooped up like a bulldozer, and coral reefs, beaches, and low lying areas will fold up to become high peaks. Seychelles will also get placed next to the Lakshadweep and along with the Malabar sediments they may become a mountain range of eight kilometres high, similar to the Himalayas where we find old coral reefs at the tops of mountains like Everest.”