page_title: Karoo Supergroup
section_title: Stormberg group
hierarchical_section_title: Karoo Supergroup / Geological origin / Stormberg group
caption_attribution_description: English: Brandwag (the Sentinel) in the Golden Gate Highlands National Park, South Africa
context_page_description: The Karoo Supergroup is the most widespread stratigraphic unit in Africa south of the Kalahari Desert. The supergroup consists of a sequence of units, mostly of nonmarine origin, deposited between the Late Carboniferous and Early Jurassic, a period of about 120 million years.
  In southern Africa, rocks of the Karoo Supergroup cover almost two thirds of the present land surface, including all of Lesotho, almost the whole of Free State, and large parts of the Eastern Cape, Northern Cape, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal Provinces of South Africa. Karoo supergroup outcrops are also found in Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi, as well as on other continents that were part of Gondwana. The basins in which it was deposited formed during the formation and breakup of Pangea. The type area of the Karoo Supergroup is the Great Karoo in South Africa, where the most extensive outcrops of the sequence are exposed. Its strata which consist mostly of shales and sandstones, record an almost continuous sequence of marine glacial to terrestrial deposition from the Late Carboniferous to the Early Jurassic. These accumulated in a retroarc foreland basin called the "main Karoo" Basin.
context_section_description: As Gondwana drifted north, conditions in the portion that was to become Southern Africa became increasingly hot and arid. Sandstones were the predominant rocks that formed. However, in some areas there was sufficient water to form swamps with consequent coal formation, but the quality is poor. The landscape probably resembled the Kalahari desert of today, with rivers like the present-day Orange River or the Nile running through it, sustaining localized areas of Triassic flora and fauna.
  The Stormberg Group  contains South Africa's earliest dinosaur fossils. It also contains the fossil remains of the shrew-sized Megazostrodon, the oldest mammal in Africa. A remarkable array of insect and plant fossils are found in some of the strata. 
    
  The uppermost strata of the Stormberg group were probably laid down under true sand desert conditions, similar to the Namib Desert in Namibia. It was probably as large as the Sahara Desert today, extending from the Cape Fold Mountains many thousands of kilometers northwards over large parts of Gondwana. Only a small remnant of this massive formation can be found in and around Lesotho today. This formation was formerly known as “Cave Sandstone” as wind-eroded shallow caves often developed in cliffs made up of these rocks. These caves were later used by the San people who frequently decorated the walls with their paintings. Today the Cave Sandstones are called the Clarens Formation.
  The oldest dinosaur embryos ever discovered were found in the Clarens Formation in 1978. The eggs were from the Triassic Period (220 to 195 million years ago) and had fossilised foetal skeletons of Massospondylus, a prosauropod dinosaur. More examples of these eggs have since been found in the Golden Gate Highlands National Park, situated on the Clarens Formation rocks. Other fossils found in the park include those of advanced cynodontia (canine toothed animals), small thecodontia (animals with teeth set firmly in the jaw), bird-like and crocodile-like dinosaurs.
caption: The Brandwag Rock (or Sentinel) in the Golden Gate Highlands National Park is composed of sandstone belonging to the Clarens Formation. The yellowish hue of the rock is typical of the Clarens rocks.
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