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About 180 million years ago, a mantle plume under southern Gondwana caused bulging of the continental crust in the area that would later become southern Africa. [2] Within 10–20 million years, rift valleys formed on either side of the central bulge and flooded to become the proto-Atlantic Ocean and proto-Indian Ocean more or less along the present southern African coastline and separating ...
A map of South Africa showing the central plateau edged by the Great Escarpment and its relationship to the Highveld and Lesotho Highlands: The portion of the Great Escarpment shown in red is officially known as the Drakensberg, although most South Africans think of the Drakensberg as only that portion of the escarpment which forms the border between KwaZulu-Natal and Lesotho.
Like much of the African continent south of the Sahara, South Africa's landscape is dominated by a high Central Plateau surrounded by coastal lowlands. This plateau is rimmed by the Great Escarpment which extends northwards to about 10° south of the Equator (i.e. into Angola in the west, and the Muchinga Escarpment in Zambia in the east.
A map of South Africa shows the central plateau edged by the Great Escarpment and its relationship to the Cape Fold Mountains to the south. The portion of the Great Escarpment shown in red is known as the Drakensberg. The Drakensberg escarpment stretches for more than 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) from the Eastern Cape Province in the South ...
The Nama Karoo biome is located entirely on the central plateau mostly at altitudes between 1000 and 1500 m. [32] [33] It incorporates nearly the whole of the historical and geographical Great Karoo, but also includes a portion of southern Namibia's Namaqualand, and South Africa's Bushmanland (both local geographical names, not names of biomes).
A map of South Africa showing the central plateau edged by the Great Escarpment and its relationship to the Cape Fold Mountains in the south. The portion of the Great Escarpment shown in red is known as the Drakensberg .
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa.Its nine provinces are bounded to the south by 2,798 kilometres (1,739 miles) of coastline that stretches along the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean; [14] [15] [16] to the north by the neighbouring countries of Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe; to the east and northeast by Mozambique and Eswatini ...
The Lesotho Highlands form a localized high spot on the Central Plateau of the Great Escarpment. This is because it is capped by a 1400 m thick layer of erosion resistant lava [4] which welled up and spread across most of Southern Africa when it was still part of Gondwana. [5]