Geology
Experience
the scenic beauty of the Soutpansberg, one of the oldest mountain
ranges in Africa
The
extremely hard reddish brown quartzite rocks, cliffs of which dominate
the landscape of Morning Sun Nature Reserve, were deposited about
1 800 million years ago in the form of sandstone and bands of conglomerate
which underwent intense metamorphism. The red colour is formed by
iron oxide. This is evidence of the earliest known occurrence of
oxygen in the earth's atmosphere caused by the evolution of plant
life capable of photosynthesis.
In places
the quartzite is interrupted by several intrusions, mainly of dolerite
(diabase), the weathering of which gave rise to localised rich clay
soils.
The mountains
were formed by successive ESE-WSW faulting, which began 2 700 million
years ago by the seismic action of the Limpopo mobile belt. Much
more recent block-faulting, less than 150 million years ago caused
the strata to dip to the north and rise in the south, forming the
main cliff lines which are south-facing, with northern sides dipping
at about 45�.
The Soutpansberg
strata became overlain by mostly softer Karoo sediments which became
eroded away, in part by rivers flowing in a northerly direction.
When these rivers wore down to the hard Soutpansberg strata, they
continued along their original paths, giving rise to gorges traversing
the E-W-striking hard quartzite ridges. The Sand River to the west
and Wyllie's Poort to the north-east of Morning Sun Nature Reserve
are examples of this phenomenon, likewise the southern arm of the
stream feeding the big waterfall and from there leading via Mashovhela
rock pool towards Wyllie's Poort.
Click
here to download our brochure (PDF 287kb)
|