Dragon Mountains rise where Gondwana's rim eroded inland
Afrikaans settlers heard dragons in the escarpment they named Drakensberge; Zulu uKhahlamba and Sotho Maloti call the same wall a barrier of pointed spears. Along more than a thousand kilometres, Southern Africa's Great Escarpment peaks between about 2,000 and 3,482 metres.
The eastern Great Escarpment wraps the central plateau from Eastern Cape northward, successively bordering Lesotho and South African provinces before continuing the highland rim. It began as steep rift walls around crust bulging during southern Gondwana breakup, then eroded inland from near-coastal birthplaces. Over the past twenty million years, especially eastern uplift lifted most of the plateau above 1,000 metres despite heavy denudation, tilting the surface high in the east and lower westward.
Seen from below, the escarpment looks like a mountain range. In Limpopo, Mpumalanga and Lesotho, hard upper layers make it rugged with blocks and pinnacles; the Limpopo and Mpumalanga sections carry an erosion-resistant quartzite cap from the Transvaal Supergroup, while softer Ecca and Beaufort sediments elsewhere give a less dramatic wall. The highest peak is Thabana Ntlenyana at 3,482 metres, followed by Mafadi at 3,450 and Njesuthi at 3,408. The summits have a mildly periglacial climate, and mapping by Knight and Grab shows lightning strikes help sculpt the highest ground.
Tugela Falls drops 947 metres, a claim to the world's highest waterfall that Venezuela's Angel Falls contests. Above about 2,500 metres lie treeless alti-montane grasslands of tussock grass, creepers and small shrubs such as ericas, home to the rare spiral aloe, while lower slopes between 1,800 and 2,500 metres form montane grassland with scattered Podocarpus conifers, unusual in Africa. Of 2,153 plant species recorded in the park, 98 are endemic or nearly so, and 119 are listed as globally endangered.
Source: Drakensberg
