The East African Rift System encompasses a wide variety of rifts including the immature Malawi rift in the south to the highly extended, seismically and volcanically active Afar rift to the north. The Afar rift offers an excellent opportunity to investigate continental break up and the formation of seafloor spreading centers on land. The opening of the Afar rift started at ∼30 million years ago (Myr), facilitated by the Afar plume and separation of Arabia from Africa and later by the rotation of the Danakil and Ali-Sabeh blocks at ∼7 Myr. Significant rift formation and propagation in central Afar occurred at around 4 Myr.

The Quaternary to Recent opening of the Afar rift is mainly accommodated at the Dabbahu-Manda Harraro and Asal-Ghobbet segments, at the tip of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden rifts, respectively. However, how the two rift segments propagate towards each other is still enigmatic. Several contrasting models have been put forward to explain the rift propagation and linkage in the Afar rift. The discrepancy among these models could be due to the difference in timescale of observations. Here we aim to combine GPS and numerical geodynamic modeling observations coupled with paleomagnetic and earthquake data to fully understand rift propagation and linkage in the central Afar across a range of timescales.