"The Bizarre Nature of Ol Doinyo Lengai: Earth's Strangest Volcano?"

Ol Doinyo Lengai, located in Tanzania, is considered one of the weirdest volcanoes on Earth due to its unique black, relatively cool, and runny motor oil-like lava, known as natrocarbonatite lava. This volcano is the only known producer of this type of lava on Earth and is situated in the East African Rift, a tectonically active region. The volcano's carbon-rich lava is believed to be created by the melting of minerals in the Earth’s upper mantle. The East African Rift system, where the volcano sits, has been tectonically active for around 25 million years and could eventually split the African continent in half.