The Saharan Atlantic ocean makes ripples (edited)

Our “Saharan Atlantic ocean” paper has just been featured in GEOLOGY's “Research Focus” article in the March issue. The focus article is entitled "Roadmap to continental rupture: Is obliquity the route to success?" is written by Cythia Ebinger and Jolante van Wijk and is available as open access. This is fantastic news!

So by now, there's been quite some science (and popular) media buzz with both Sydney Uni and GFZ Potsdam having released press info on our article - it's been overwhelming.

Spiegel Online (one of the largest German online news outlets) & Sueddeutsche Zeitung (also one of the largest papers) reported in Germany even going a bit beyond the standard press release texts. As Sascha and I hoped, our hypothetical “Saharan Ocean” image (see here) facilitated the take up of the story quite a bit.

According to Altmetric, the article is currently ranking as #7 in terms of impact which makes it one of the highest ever scores for articles published in GEOLOGY. [2020-12-29] The Altmetric bot has picked up quite a few additional sites.

• ScienceDaily: How earth might have looked like
• Daily Mail: A twist of plates (interesting comments on that one - science communication)
• SpiegelOnline: Die unmoegliche Nase Suedamerikas
• Sueddeutsche Zeitung: Die Welt die niemals war
• Sydney University front page news: How the world missed out on a Saharan Ocean
• Helmholtz Zentrum - Bild des Monats/Image of the month
• International Business times: Map of How Earth would have looked...
• Journal de science (French): Tectonique des plaques : la Terre aurait pu être très différente
• Der Standart (Austria): Warum Nordwestafrika nicht Teil Suedamerikas ist
• Scinexx (DE): Afrika: Raetsel der Form geklaert
• Nu.nl: Aarde had bijna twee Afrika's gehad
• Phys.org: What sculpted Africa's margin
• Corriere de la Sierra (IT): La foto del giorno
• motherboard.Vice.com: The African continent that almost was
• science20.com: Gondwana: What sculpted Africa's margins 130 Million years ago?
• Sascha gave an interview to RBB Radio Kultur (Berlin/Brandenburg region): Woher hat Afrika seine Form? (in German, link to mediathek)
• A colleague provided me a link to NOS.nl - the Dutch public broadcaster news site: Sahara ad oceaan kunnen zijn
• CBC Canada's Quirks and Quarks: I was interviewed by Bob McDonald on “How continents stay in shape” (link to website with podcast).
• Our map and an article on are featured on BigThink's Strange Maps blog post.
• [2014-05-12] We're featuring in this month's GFZ Potsdam's GeoForschungsZeitung: “Kontinentales Tauziehen” [PDF link, in German] and link to the GFZeitung [GFZ Potsdam, in German].