With a thickness between 50 and 70 metres (160 and 230 ft) and present in an area of 600 by 600 kilometres (370 by 370 mi), the formation is considered the primary target for shale gas potential in the Southern Karoo.

The abundance of Glossopteris and Mesosaurus fossils are characteristic of the Gondwanan correlation across present-day South America, Africa, Antarctica and Australia.

[1] The formation is found at the edge of the Karoo Basin at distances of 600 kilometres (370 mi) north to south and east to west.

[4] Single zircon U-Pb SHRIMP dating yielded an age of 279.1 ± 1.5 Ma for the Uhabis River Tuff present in the upper strata of the underlying Prince Albert Formation.

The lower and thicker part consists mainly of bluish- to greenish-grey shales and mudstones, which grade upward into more light brownish, buff weathering, slightly coarser grained siltstones.

This zone is conformably overlain by white weathering shales, with intermittent chert lenses and pyritic stringers; the latter rarely exceeding 20 millimetres (0.79 in) in thickness.

[3] From outcrops in southernmost Namibia (Aussenkjer-Noordoewer area) it became evident that the boundary between the Prince Albert and the Whitehill Formation represents the turning point from a progradational to a retrogradational succession.

[15] The tuffs within the Whitehill Formation, as well as other tuffaceous beds found in the underlying and overlying formations, were possibly sourced by volcanoes located in present-day South America,[16] although other interpretations of the tuffs of the Dwyka and Ecca Groups propose a general source along the southern Panthalassian margin of current southern Africa.

[21] The fossil assemblages of Glossopteris and Mesosaurus are known from other parts of Gondwana; the Vryheid Formation of South Africa and coal deposits of the Lower Permian in Australia.

Plant stems are similarly rare, and most commonly occur as chloritized fragments floating in the pink lower, more massive mudstone succession of the Whitehill Formation, while coprolites containing either palaeoniscoid scales or fragmentary crustacean carapaces are preserved on bedding planes.