Page 42 - waterfall Issue 12 2021

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
take up 50% of Southern Africa’s land considered to be one of the planet’s most
mass and the four desert biomes have interesting and diverse arid ‘hot spots’.
as many species as the moist biomes.
One of the most interesting parts
Mary and I described a visit to one of of Lovegrove’s book embraces his
them in 2019 – the Tankwa karoo, which thoughts on ‘global heating’ (he prefers
despite its baking, gravelly plains, is part this phrase to ‘global warming’) which,
of our largest desert biome, the plant- he avers is a threat to this nation that
rich ‘Succulent karoo’ which includes few South Africans take seriously.
Namaqualand and the Richtersveld. Its quite rapid onset has been scary
As a desert region of this size, it has and Lovegrove is concerned by the
the largest number of succulent plants changes he has witnessed during
in the world. This 150km wide belt his working life as a biologist.
running parallel with the Atlantic coast
starts not very far north of Cape Town 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 population of
vertebrates from the Middle Permian
around 270 million years ago, and
including the bizarre early Jurassic
around 190 million years ago.

The 300-page book provides a highly
readable account of this unbroken
80 million year fossil record of the
ancestors of today’s mammals and birds,
which are being unearthed in the karoo.
His account also includes the greatest
extinction event in the planet’s history.

The karoo Basin formed 320 million
years ago when there was only
one giant continent on Planet
Earth – Pangea. The South Pole was
then in the middle of the slab that
eventually became Southern Africa.

Living Deserts contains spectacular
photographs and many handy
maps and drawn illustrations.

Published by Struik Nature
R450

40 Waterfall Issue 12 2021