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The Karoo Basin … a mirror of 110 million years of environmental change. Dr Billy de Klerk

The Karoo Basin … a mirror of 110 million years of environmental change. Dr Billy de Klerk. The Karoo Basin focus on a few points: It is the only sedimentary basin in the world that contains a continuous record of terrestrial sediment accumulation over 110 million years.

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The Karoo Basin … a mirror of 110 million years of environmental change. Dr Billy de Klerk

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  1. The Karoo Basin … a mirror of 110 million years of environmental change. Dr Billy de Klerk

  2. The Karoo Basin focus on a few points: It is the only sedimentary basin in the world that contains a continuous record of terrestrial sediment accumulation over 110 million years. It contains an uninterrupted accumulation of fossils of land animals and plants that lived at that time. These terrestrial fossils provide us with the wonderful evolutionary record of both the mammals and the rise of dinosaurs. MORE IMPORTANTLY – I believe that the bulk of the accumulated natural gas, that is being targeted for exploration (Fracking), was driven off at the end of the Karoo accumulation when the volcanic Drakensberg flood basalts were erupted - 190 million years ago.

  3. 300 Ma 110 Ma 190 Ma

  4. Karoo Supergroup • Stormberg Group • Drakensberg Frm • Clarens Frm • Elliot Frm • Molteno Frm • Beaufort Group • Cynognathus Zone • Lystrosaurus Zone • Dicynodon Zone • Cistecephalus Zone • Tropidostoma Zone • Pristrognathus Zone • Tapinocephalus Zone • Eodicynodon Zone • Ecca Group • Dwyka Group 190 Ma 300 Ma

  5. Distribution of the rocks of The Karoo Sequence

  6. Karoo Supergroup 110 million years

  7. 10º 30º 20º Karoo Supergroup

  8. Dwyka Group times 300 Ma (Carboniferous) Mesosaurus

  9. DwykaGlaciation

  10. Glacial pavements Glacial tillite

  11. Ecca Group 280 Ma (Early Permian)

  12. Beaufort Group Sediments deposited by rivers

  13. Beaufort Group

  14. Karoo – 250 Ma Middle Beaufort times

  15. Therapsids (Mammal-like Reptiles) Cynodonts advanced Increasing “mammalness” Therocephalians primitive Gorgonopsians Biarmosuchians Dicynodonts Dinocephalians

  16. Therapsids (Mammal-like Reptiles) “The mammal-like reptiles of South Africa may be safely regarded as the most important fossil animals ever discovered, and their importance lies chiefly in the fact that there is little doubt that among them we have the ancestors of the mammals, and the remote ancestors of man.” Dr Robert Broom (1932)

  17. Van der Walt (in press)

  18. Diictodon A small dicynodont

  19. Aulacephalodon Dicynodonts

  20. Trace fossil Dicynodont trackways

  21. Carnivorous Gorgonopsians

  22. Cistecephalus Biozone - 253 Ma Artist: Gerhard Marx

  23. Chris Scotes (2002)

  24. Stormberg Group Drakensberg Clarens Elliot Molteno Barkly East District

  25. South African landscape - 200 Ma Elliot & Clarens Formation Prevailing winds Climate - progressively more arid

  26. Barkly Pass, Eastern Cape There’s dinosaurs in them thar hills! Clarens Formation Elliot Formation (Red Beds)

  27. Massospondylus Elliot Formation – 210 Ma About 6m long

  28. Heterodontosaurus 117 mm

  29. First Mammals Megazostrodon & Moganucodon

  30. Combined Elliot & Clarens Formation Landscape -200 Ma

  31. Drakensberg Volcanic eruptions

  32. Drakensberg volcanics

  33. •Middelburg 20 km Nieu Bethesda •

  34. Conclusions The Drakensberg flood basalts were erupted over a period of at least three million years. Successive lava flows build up an accumulated thickness of no less than 1,4 km. Much of this basalt has been eroded away over the past 185 million years revealing the underlying Karoo sediments. The volcanic eruptions were fed by magma that had to migrate and force itself through the entire sedimentary succession of the Karoo Basin (c. 6 km thick). Today we see these conduits as topographic highs in the Karoo landscape as dykes and sills – the koppies and flat-topped hills. Liquid basaltic magma has a temperature of ~1200°C Insulated and slow cooling magma would take a few hundred thousand years to cool down and would therefore heat the containing sediments considerably (hay-box effect). As a consequence, the accumulated volatile natural gas, contained within the adjacent sediments, would have been burned off or expelled.

  35. Let us keep this wondrous treasure trove pristine! Thank you.

  36. Let us keep this wondrous treasure-trove pristine! Thank you.

  37. Reconstruction of Aulacephalodon

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