Page 4 - Bulletin 2 1998

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THE PALAEONTOLOGY OF THE WESTERN CAPE COASTAL LOWLANDS

FROM 10 MILLION YEARS AGO TO THE PRESENT

Graham Avery

Introduction

Although there are long gaps in the record for the Western Cape, the area is comparatively
rich in information covering the lat 13 million years. Significant geographic and

biogeographic changes took place. There were ‘glacial’ and interglacial climatic episodes

which affected the climate and the environment, including the position and nature of the coast
and the vegetation; animals became extinct or evolved to become the species we know today.

Where no sites of particular age occur around False Bay we are reliant on observations from
elsewhere in the region to suggest local conditions.

Table Mountain and Before

“Trace fossils”, in the form of tracks left by aquatic arthropods (probably trilobites and
‘worms’) crawling and burrowing on a mud surface in calm and shallow waters some 500

million years ago, are found in the lower deposits of Table Mountain (Hunter 1987.)
Subsequently, the sandy sediments that make up most of Table Mountain were laid down in

near-coastal or marine conditions between 450 and 260 million years ago. Between 260 and
180 million years ago, during the break-up of Gondwana, these relatively horizontal

sediments were subjected to the uplift and faulting that created the basic topography of the

‘Cape Folded Belt’, which has been eroding to its present form ever since.