Anatomy of a river drainage reversal in the Neogene Kivu–Nile Rift

Abstract

The Neogene geological history of East Africa is characterised by the doming and extension in the course of development of the East African Rift System with its eastern and western branches. In the centre of the Western Rift Rise Rwanda is situated on Proterozoic basement rocks exposed in the strongly uplifted eastern rift shoulder of the Kivu–Nile Rift segment, where clastic sedimentation is largely restricted to the rift axis itself. A small, volcanically and tectonically controlled depository in northwestern Rwanda preserved the only Neogene sediments known from the extremely uplifted rift shoulder. Those (?)Pliocene to Pleistocene/Holocene fluvio-lacustrine muds and sands of the Palaeo-Nyabarongo River record the influence of Virunga volcanism on the major drainage reversal that affected East Africa in the Plio-/Pleistocene, when the originally rift-parallel upper Nile drainage system became diverted to the East in order to enter the Nile system via Lake Victoria. Sedimentary facies development, heavy mineral distributions and palaeobiological controls, including hominid artefacts, signal a short time interval of <300–350 ka to complete this major event for the sediment supply system of the Kivu–Nile Rift segment.