We have concentrated on the dispersal of Gondwana into fragments that make up today's southern continents. Elsewhere on the globe, continents collided and amalgamated in the way that India has collided with Asia in our model. The amalgamation of continental fragments to form Gondwana itself dates from the closing stages of Precambrian time, about 600 Ma. Even older fragments, such as the Archean Zimbabwe craton, became surrounded by Proterozoic orogenic belts dating from that time and from earlier orogenies. 'Pan-African' rocks from this (series of) events may be found in many parts of Africa. From the start of Phanerozoic times (540 Ma) until late Carboniferous time (300 Ma) central Gondwana remained a stable entity.

With Gondwana situated at high southerly latitudes, the first signs of instability appeared. An enormous orogenic belt stretched from present-day Colombia to Queensland via western Antarctica as crust from the Pacific Ocean plunged below 15000 km of Gondwana margin. Only the southernmost tip of Africa retains direct evidence of orogeny - the Cape Fold Belt. Further north (and in India and Antarctica) the 'Karoo' Permo-Triassic rifts were forming and accumulating sediment. The great Karoo basin and the lesser Kalahari Karoo basin were accumulating similarly-aged sediment in broad basins in southern Africa. The polar climate with glacial depositis changed gradually into temperate swamps with coal deposits and then dry, tropical redbeds as Gondwana moved some 30 degrees further north in 100 My.

About 183 Ma, in Early Jurassic time, widespread magmatic activity spread across southern Africa with lava flows covering more than a million km2 and the injection of dykes, including the Okavango dyke swarm. This marked the start of true Gondwana disruption. The Morokweng impact occurred at the end of Jurassic time (146 Ma). Africa's margins developed progrssively until, about 100 Ma, passive margins surrounded the whole, stable, sub-equatorial continent. Deposition of the supra-crustal Kalahari and Congo sediments followed during Cretaceous and Cenozoic times to the present day.

The animation attempts to demonstrate this geological history for the whole of southern Africa, starting with an informal interpretation of the aeromagnetic coverage (Barritt, 1993) which gives arguably the best image of the continuum of Precambrian geology (pink) hidden below the younger cover rocks. The Karoo sediments and Jurassic magmatism are followed by the dispersal of the surrounding continents and the appearence of the Cretaceous and younger cover formations of the Kalahari and Congo basins. Much, of course, remains to be explored. For convenience, Africa is fixed in this animation.