Page 25 - Irene Farm Villages Issue 1 2022

creatures and plants. Deserts take up population of vertebrates from the The Karoo Basin formed 320 million
50% of Southern Africa’s land mass and Middle Permian around 270 million years ago when there was only one giant
the four desert biomes have as many years ago, and including the bizarre early continent on Planet Earth – Pangea. The
species as the moist biomes. Jurassic around 190 million years ago. South Pole was then in the middle of the
Mary and I described a visit to one of The 300-page book provides a highly slab that eventually became Southern
them in 2019 – the Tankwa Karoo, which readable account of this unbroken Africa.
despite its baking, gravelly plains, is part 80 million year fossil record of the Living Deserts contains spectacular
of our largest desert biome, the plant- ancestors of today’s mammals and birds, photographs and many handy maps
rich ‘Succulent Karoo’ which includes which are being unearthed in the Karoo. and drawn illustrations.
Namaqualand and the Richtersveld. His account also includes the greatest
As a desert region of this size, it has extinction event in the planet’s history. Published by Struik Nature - Price: R450
the largest number of succulent plants
in the world. This 150km wide belt
running parallel with the Atlantic coast
starts not very far north of Cape Town
and extends into Namibia. Its rainfall is
between 20 and 290mm a year, yet it
has 6 356 known species, many of them
dependent on the nightly fogs.
Biologists across the world are
fascinated by the Succulent Karoo,
which is considered to be one of the
planet’s most interesting and diverse
arid ‘hot spots’.
One of the most interesting parts
of Lovegrove’s book embraces his
thoughts on ‘global heating’ (he prefers
this phrase to ‘global warming’) which,
he avers is a threat to this nation that
few South Africans take seriously. Its
quite rapid onset has been scary and
Lovegrove is concerned by the changes
he has witnessed during his working life
as a biologist.
The author devotes a chapter to a topic
that was underplayed in his previous book
on the desert biomes. The new chapter
provides a fascinating view of the Karoo’s
beginnings and its extraordinary yield
of magnificent fossils of its prehistoric

The Villager • Issue 1 2022 • 23