The Karoo desert is located in South Africa, and rather than being a traditional sand desert, is more of a semi desert with barren landscape covering a plateau that covers much of the country. The Karoo is distinguished by two regions, the northern Great
Karoo covering an area of 154440.863 square miles dominated
by the Nuweweld Mountains and the southern Little Karoo.
It is believed the
land area has been in existence for around hundreds of millions of
years and up to 270 million years ago was covered by an ice sheet. However as the ice warmed,
the area became home to vast inland seas and swamps that themselves dried out
millennia ago. Many fossils of reptiles that roamed during this period
have been found in the rock strata.
Indeed
the Karoo Desert is acknowledged as being one of the biggest and
most important fossil deposit sites in the world with creatures
such as the Pareiasaurus (a hippo-crocodile combo) and the
Diictodon being found dating back some 240 million years.
This
era came to an end when the volcanoes erupted filling the basin
with molten lava that extinguished most life forms, and after
the cooling, led to the introduction of small mammal life forms
and the landscape that is now evident.
Today, the desert is home to a few animals including the black
rhino, caracal and aardvark, the mountain zebra and Cape and
bat-eared foxes. It is estimated that there are around 9000
species of plants in the Great Karoo giving it the widest
diversity of desert flora of any desert on Earth.
Although sparsely populated due to its arid nature, there are a
number of small communities living inside the Karoo Desert. The
oldest and largest such town, Beaufort West, can be traced back
to the 1830s and is located close to the Karoo Nature Reserve.
One of its claims to fame is that Beaufort West was the
birthplace of Doctor Christian Barnard who performed the world's
first successful heart transplant operation. Most of these towns
supply the vast tracks of land that are used to rear marino
sheep and cattle.
The
Little or Klein Karoo is a valley bordered by the Swartberg and
Langeberg Mountains in South Africa and littered with succulent
plants that store water in their roots, stems and leaves,
allowing them to thrive in the harsh climate of the desert.
