Solitude Formation

Solitude Fm

Period:

Triassic

Age Interval:

Early-Middle Triassic (Olenekian-Ladinian)

Province:
SouthAfrica-Namibia-Botswana

Type Locality and Naming

Soutpansberg, Tshipise, and Tuli Basins (Limpopo Province, South Africa; extending into neighboring Zimbabwe). Named after the farm Solitude in the northern Limpopo Province of South Africa. Upper formation in Beaufort Gr

Synonym:

Lithology and Thickness

A predominantly fine-grained, argillaceous succession reaching up to 110 to 170 meters in thickness. It is composed of alternating bands of grey, dark grey, and purplish mudstones, shales, and siltstones, with minor intercalations of fine-grained sandstone.

Lithology Pattern:

Fine-grained sandstone

Relationships and Distribution

Lower contact

Conformably overlies the coarse-grained, white, arkosic sandstones of the Fripp Fm.

Upper contact

Unconformably and abruptly overlain by the coarse-grained, conglomeratic braided-river sandstones of the Klopperfontein Fm (the local Molteno Fm equivalent).

Regional extent

Restricted to the fault-bounded, east-west trending Karoo rift basins of northern South Africa (the Soutpansberg, Tshipise, and Tuli basins) and stretching across the Limpopo River into southern Zimbabwe. Beaufort Gr equivalent in the northern Karoo rift basins. It correlates chronostratigraphically and environmentally with the Eendragtpan Fm of the Ellisras Basin (Waterberg Coalfield) and the thick Beaufort Gr mudrocks of the Main Karoo Basin.

GeoJSON

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Fossils

Age

Early-Middle Triassic (Olenekian-Ladinian)

Age Span:

Beginning stage:

Olenekian

Fraction up in beginning stage:

0.0

Beginning date (Ma):

249.88

Ending stage:

Ladinian

Fraction up in the ending stage:

1.0

Ending date (Ma):

237.00

Depositional setting

Broad floodplains and low-sinuosity meandering river environments.

Depositional pattern:

Additional Information

Compiler:

From the O. Catuneanu et al. / Journal of African Earth Sciences 43 (2005) 211–253; Johnson, M.R., et al. (2006): Sedimentary rocks of the Karoo Supergroup. In: The Geology of South Africa; Brandl, G. (1981): The geology of the Messina area. Explanation of Sheet 2230, Geological Survey of South Africa; Bordy, E.M., & Catuneanu, O. (2001): Sedimentology of the Upper Karoo fluvial strata in the Tuli Basin, South Africa. Journal of African Earth Sciences.