The Karoo Supergroup was formed in a vast inland basin starting 320 million years ago, at a time when that part of Gondwana which would eventually become Africa, lay over the South Pole. As Gondwana drifted northwards, the basin turned into an inland sea with extensive swampy deltas along its northern shores.

South Africa
Karoo, also spelled Karroo, arid to semiarid geographic region of Eastern Cape, Western Cape, and Northern Cape provinces, South Africa. The Karoo is best defined by its vegetation, which consists of assorted succulents and low scrub bushes spaced from one foot to several feet apart.

Classified as semi-desert, The Great Karoo is in fact a conglomerate of habitats, of mountain, savannah, grassland and desert, the so-called Nama and Succulent Karoos. The Succulent Karoo occupies the western third of the Great Karoo.

The Great Karoo is a vast semi-desert region of more than 400,000 square kilometers stretching over the provinces of the Eastern, Northern and Western Cape. The Karoo offers the visitor vast plains, majestic mountains, champagne air and picturesque Karoo towns steeped in history and intrigue.

Learn More in these related Britannica articles: Escarpment, which consists of the Drakensberg and Cape ranges, and by the Lesotho Highlands.

Cape Point is in the Cape of Good Hope nature reserve within Table Mountain National Park, which forms part of the Cape Floral Region, a World Heritage Site. It includes the majestic Table Mountain chain, which stretches from Signal Hill to Cape Point, and the coastlines of the Cape Peninsula.

Karoo Meat Production Regions Only lamb and mutton born in the Karoo may be labelled as Karoo Meat, Karoo Lamb or Karoo Mutton. The region is a semi-desert area stretching over parts of the Northern Cape, Western Cape and Eastern Cape.

Escarpments are formed by one of two processes: erosion and faulting. Erosion creates an escarpment by wearing away rock through wind or water. One side of an escarpment may be eroded more than the other side. The result of this unequal erosion is a transition zone from one type of sedimentary rock to another.

The Drakensberg Group was formed approximately 182 million years ago during the early Jurassic period. Rifting tectonics in response to the breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana are believed to have been the cause for the formation of the Drakensberg Group.

Cape Point is a promontory at the South East corner of the Cape Peninsula, which is a mountainous and scenic landform that runs North-South for about thirty kilometres at the extreme South Western tip of the African Continent in the Republic of South Africa.

Eastern Cape province
Port Elizabeth, port city, Eastern Cape province, southern South Africa. It lies on Algoa Bay of the Indian Ocean, its deepwater harbour enclosed by a breakwater.

It almost feels like walking around in a spice market and gives its distinctive taste to the Karoo meat. The Karoo lamb and Karoo mutton is famous for its unique herby aroma and taste and so only sheep that have been grazing on these bushes will acquire this distinctive Karoo meat flavour.

5,700 karoo landscape stock photos, vectors, and illustrations are available royalty-free.

Rock formations in the Karoo. The Karoo’s Beaufort Group rocks were laid down as mud and silt in a basin that then covered most of Southern Africa. Giant reptiles roamed the swampy ground, and there they died, to be preserved in the mud and fossilized to form shales.

The Karoo is a land of rolling mountains, often snow-capped in winter, vast plains that surround where you can almost see the curve of the earth’s surface as they merge with the distant horizon, the distinctively clean-shaped hills or Karoo koppies capped in the hard rock resulting from millions of year’s erosion…

But who are the people who live in the Karoo and where did they come from? The original inhabitants were the San or Bushman who lived in most parts of South Africa, including the Karoo, before the arrival of the African migrants from the north and east, and the European settlers from the Cape.