This means that the floor of the Atlantic Ocean basin has a big 'rip' in the middle where magma is spewing out and forming new oceanic crust and thus forcing Africa and South America away from each other.This has been happening since the Jurassic period, some 200 million years ago!Source(s): geology degree.ell, one side of each continent (the atlantic ocean side) is moving away from the other continent, but since the earth is round, this means that the other sides must be moving toward each other, unless the world is growing, and it doesn,t appear to be, so..... busterwasmycat · 5 years ago.