The South American ancient mountains systems/ landmass of Guiana and Brazilian Highlands can be called the counterpart of the South African Table Mountain and Cape Mountains.
According to geologists, most of the natural features of South Africa were formed more than 200 million years ago. Geologists have hypothesized that South Africa was once part of a large land mass known as Gondwana, or Gondwanaland. Gondwana fractured along the African coastline millions of years ago. These theories are supported with geological continuities and mineral similarities between South Africa and the older Guiana and Brazilian Highlands located near the eastern margins of South America. There are also fossil similarities between South Africa and the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar. Eventually, more of the same ancient plants and animals were unearthed in fossil beds dispersed throughout parts of all these present day continents.
More than 600 million years ago, the southern Cape was part of Gondwana and lay beneath the sea. Volcanic activity pushed lava up through the sea-bed shale (known as Malmesbury shale), and raised it above the sea level. The lava then formed granite, which are very predominant along the coast as rounded boulders. This Cape granite and Malmesbury shale then subsided under a shallow sea for the next 200 million years, becoming buried under layers of sedimentary deposits from the rivers flowing from the north. About 120 million years ago, Gondwana began to break up. Connections between Africa and South America were broken about 100 million years ago. Theories of such a supercontinent are bolstered by geological continuities and mineral similarities between South Africa and South America, by fossil similarities between South Africa and the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar, and by the sharp escarpments, or geological fractures, that encircle most of southern Africa near the coast.
http://www.worldfacts.us/South-Africa-geography.htm
http://geology.wcedu.pima.edu/~mjoy/tablemountain.html
Alfred Wegener, a German meteorologist, presented his theories in his 1915 book On the Origin of Continents and Oceans, in which he looked at geologic formations and saw patterns such as the presence of ancient mountains in South Africa which align with the mountains near Buenos Aires in Argentina when the two continents are "fitted" along coastlines. Layers of sandstone, shale, and clay interspersed with coal in both South Africa and Brazil seemed to match in sequence. The presence of ancient mountain remnants running through Australia, Antarctica, South Africa, and South America reinforces the theories of Pangea. The Samgrau Mountain Belt (derived from South America, Africa, and Australia), runs along the present western edge of South America, the Cape fold Belt at the tip of southern Africa, the western edge of Antarctica, and the eastern Tasman Belt in Australia. When the continents of Gondwanaland are assembled it is easy to see the continuous nature of this chain. The dating of this formation places it at about 400 million years ago.
2007-08-02 05:57:09
·
answer #1
·
answered by mahua 6
·
2⤊
0⤋
Determining its "counterpart" in S. America would be somewhat difficult to determine because erosion might already have worked on it and eroded it much earlier compared to the Table mountain. Another one is that the Table mountain might simply have not yet existed during the formation of the Pangaea. It might have just been formed, through uplift or erosion after the two continents separated.
2007-08-01 05:28:56
·
answer #2
·
answered by Anonymous
·
0⤊
0⤋
In Geology Class we saw a video on the Pangaea and the scientists on this video actually took the continents and put them into a puzzle which was possibly the Pangaea, and the mountains ranges on the continents actually looked like they fit. I would say that they are similar.
2007-07-27 20:01:48
·
answer #4
·
answered by Kristenite’s Back! 7
·
0⤊
1⤋