Eastern Arc Mountains
Tentative World Heritage Site in Tanzania
The Eastern Arc Mountains are a chain of mountains found in Kenya and Tanzania. The chain runs from northeast to southwest, with the Taita Hills being in Kenya and the other ranges being in Tanzania. They are delimited on the southwest by the fault complex represented by the Makambako Gap that separates them from the Kipengere Range. To the northeast, they are delimited by more recent volcanism represented by Mount Kilimanjaro. The chain is considered a tentative World Heritage Site.
Mountain ranges
The Eastern Arc Mountains form a roughly crescent-shaped arc and consist of:
Taita Hills
North and South Pare Mountains
East and West Usambara Mountains
Nguru Mountains
Ukaguru Mountains
Uluguru Mountains
Uvidunda Mountains
Rubeho Mountains
Malundwe Mountain
Udzungwa Mountains
Mahenge Mountains
Geology
These mountain ranges are the oldest in East Africa, and though physically separated from each other, share a similar geomorphology and ecology. They were formed at least 100 million years ago along a fault lying to the east of the East African Rift, which is a more recent structure. About 30 million years ago, all this area was covered by extensive rainforest. During a period some 10 million years ago, when the climate was cooler and drier, the lowland forests were converted to savanna, leaving the mountain ranges as "islands" where the tropical forests continued to flourish, fed by moisture-laden winds from the Indian Ocean. This isolation of each mountain range has led to a great deal of endemism, and a very diverse flora and fauna.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Eastern Arc Mountains” as tentative World Heritage Site in Tanzania. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as tentative World Heritage Site in Tanzania. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2569921. VIAF identifies the subject as 234787812. The Library of Congress control number is sh2002000817. Authority coordinates are -6.000, 36.000. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Eastern Arc Mountains” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.