Ecca Group

Based on stratigraphic position, lithostratigraphic correlation, palynological analyses, and other means of geological dating, the Ecca Group ranges between Early to earliest Middle Permian (Asselian - Roadian) in age.

The Ecca sea was vast but shallow, reaching only around 500 m at its deepest in its west/northwestern and southern facies where the Tanqua and Laingsburg Depocenters are situated respectively.

The mountain-building and erosion caused by the growing Gondwanide mountain range was the initial subsidence mechanism acting on the Karoo Basin.

[7][8][9][10][11] The rocks of the Ecca Group first appear near Sutherland in its westernmost deposits, and continues east through Laingsburg, Prince Albert, Jansenville, Grahamstown, and up until the coast near Port Alfred.

In the extreme northeast deposits are found east of Johannesburg past Vryheid, Durban, Pietermaritzburg and all the way down to Port St. Johns in the southeast.

Near the small town of Khorixas in Namibia there is a locally well-known national monument called the Petrified Forest.

A mountain in the Tanqua Karoo, South Africa, with multiple layers of turbidites formed in the south-western portion of the Karoo Sea about 300 million years
A fossil Mesosaurus tenuidens (syn.Mesosaurus brasiliensis), Permian (270 myo)
Example of a peat swamp environment, similar to the depositional environment preserved in the Vryheid Formation rocks. Plant material would have sunk below surface to the bottom of the swamp, being preserved in the anoxic environment. Over time plant material would be compacted and buried by sediment. Over millions of years the plant material mineralized, becoming coal
Biostratigraphic correlation of fossils in the greater Gondwana across present-day South America, southern Africa, Antarctica and Australia
Fossil tree from the Permian Ecca Group of the Karoo Sequence at the petrified forest, east of Doro !Nawas, Namibia