Emese Bordy

University of Cape Town | UCT · Department of Geological Sciences

The Clarens Formation is a widespread aeolianite deposited over southern Gondwana and represents the final phase of erg evolution in the main Karoo Basin during the Early Jurassic. Previous age assessments of the formation hinge on limited detrital zircon data, supplemented by relative ages from the biostratigraphy and geochronology of the adjacent...

Our paper is open access, but for now, we can only share its journal pre-proof (in press) version: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095383624000014 Tracks registration is influenced by the dynamic interplay between the pedal anatomy of the trackmaker, its behaviour, and the substrate conditions it interacts with. Differences in...

‘Rauisuchians’ are a grade of paracrocodylomorph archosaurs that evolved a diversity of body plans and played a key role in ecosystems worldwide throughout the Triassic. They are widely believed to have gone extinct during the end-Triassic mass extinction event, though the fossil record of rauisuchians in the latest Triassic is still poorly known....

Footprint morphology reflects the anatomy of the trackmaker’s foot and is direct evidence for the animal’s behaviour. Consequently, fossil tracks can be used to infer ancient diversity, ethology, and evolutionary trends. This is particularly useful for deep-time intervals during which the early history of an animal group is reliant upon limited fos...

Using modern ichnological and stratigraphic tools, we reinvestigate two iconic sauropodomorph-attributed tetradactyl ichnogenera, Pseudotetrasauropus and Tetrasauropus , and their stratigraphic occurrences in the middle Upper Triassic of Lesotho. These tracks have been reaffirmed and are stratigraphically well-constrained to the lower Elliot Format...

The main Karoo Basin of South Africa and Lesotho preserves c. 120 myr of Earth's history. The sedimentary rocks of its Karoo Supergroup record massive environmental changes from the glacial Carboniferous to desert dunes and fiery flood basalts in the Early Jurassic. From the early Permian, the Karoo Basin was gradually filled with fluvial and lacus...

Throughout Earth's history, dust deposits have been considered sensitive markers of fluctuations in global atmospheric circulation patterns. However, the identification of ancient dust deposits remains problematic, as their massive (structureless) nature impedes an unequivocal classification. In southern Africa, the Lower Jurassic Clarens Formation...

The sedimentary facies architecture of a Plio‐Pleistocene diamond‐bearing gravel barrier spit within the palaeo‐Orange River mouth in south‐western Namibia has been revealed during onshore mining activities. Four sedimentary facies associations build this ancient coastal landform and have been interpreted, from a seaward to landward direction, as s...

Trackways of bipeds and quadrupeds attributed to Late Triassic and Early Jurassic basal sauropodomorphs (‘prosauropods’) fall into several ichnogenera. Four of these – Otozoum, Pseudotetrasauropus, Evazoum and Kalosauropus – are conceptually subsumed into the OPEK plexus, where the former two represent large facultative quadrupeds, and the latter t...

The rock record from the late Early Jurassic in southern Africa encompasses the history of voluminous continental flood basalt outpourings associated with the magmatic events in the Karoo–Ferrar Large Igneous Province (LIP) in southern and eastern Gondwana. This multiphase magmatism produced one of Earth’s largest continental flood basalt successio...

Interdune deposits are sensitive to climatic fluctuations and ancient interdune lacustrine systems can reveal the drivers of erg dynamics through time and space. This southern African study details the dynamics of interdune deposition in a vast ancient desert system that was active over Pangaea in the Middle Mesozoic and formed part of the one of t...

Comprising more than 350 dinosaur footprints and at least 38 trackways, the TY tracksite described herein is located close to the border of NW Lesotho, near Teyateyaneng (TY), and is probably identical to the site originally mentioned by Dornan in 1908. The tridactyl footprints are exposed as natural casts on a cliff overhang and a fallen block at...

The end-Triassic mass extinction events mark a pivotal period in archosaur history, and have been proposed to contribute to the rise and dominance of dinosaurs throughout the Mesozoic. In southern Africa, the Triassic–Jurassic boundary is contained within the richly fossiliferous fluvio-lacustrine-aeolian deposits of the upper Stormberg Group in th...

Basin evolution models are dependent on high-quality subsurface data, normally obtained during hydrocarbon exploration activities. The limited exploration, to-date, has impeded the understanding of the geological evolution of the offshore Algoa and Gamtoos half-graben basins in the southern Cape region of South Africa. To reconstruct the main geolo...

The Upper Triassic to Lower Jurassic Elliot Formation of the main Karoo Basin in South Africa and Lesotho preserves evidence for a diverse continental ecosystem. Significant syn-sedimentary paleo-environmental change is arrested by the meandering channel, crevasse splays and floodplain facies associated with the lower Elliot Formation and ephemeral...

Ornithischian dinosaurs were ecologically prominent herbivores of the Mesozoic Era that achieved a global distribution by the onset of the Cretaceous. The ornithischian body plan is aberrant relative to other ornithodiran clades, and crucial details of their early evolution remain obscure. We present a new, fully articulated skeleton of the early b...

Permian black shales from the lower Ecca Group of the southern main Karoo Basin (MKB) have a total organic carbon (TOC) of up to ~5 wt% and have been considered primary targets for a potential shale gas exploration in South Africa. This study investigates the influence of shale composition, porosity, pressure (P) and temperatures (T) on their geome...

Assessing the composition and origin of the organic matter-rich mudstones, which dominate the early basin fill of the main Karoo Basin of South Africa, are essential for reconstructing the palaeo-environment, palaeo-climate, and potential provenance areas in southern Gondwana during the Early Permian. This study investigates the sedimentary geochem...

Two levels of volcaniclastics, comprising conglomerates, sandstones and mudstones, are interbedded with upper middle Miocene (upper Badenian) andesite pyroclastics near the Hungarian–Slovakian border in the distal region of the Central Slovakian Neogene Volcanic Field. Based on the field sedimentological investigations, the facies of the volcanicla...

Two levels of volcaniclastics, comprising conglomerates, sandstones and mudstones, are interbedded with upper middle Miocene (upper Badenian) andesite pyroclastics near the Hungarian-Slovakian border in the distal region of the Central Slovakian Neogene Volcanic Field. Based on the field sedimentological investigations, the facies of the volcanicla...

Theropod dinosaurs are considered the main terrestrial carnivores in the Jurassic and Cretaceous. Their rise to dominance has been linked to, among others, body size changes in their early history, especially across the Triassic–Jurassic boundary. However, to qualitatively assess such temporal trends, robust skeletal and trace fossil data sets are...

Palaeoenvironmental changes during continental flood basalt volcanism in large igneous provinces are increasingly linked to global environmental perturbations. Whilst the geology of the Karoo-Ferrar continental flood basalts, including their eruption history, mode of emplacement, timing, geochemistry, palaeomagnetism, has been described, and the ca...

Theropod dinosaurs are considered the main terrestrial carnivores in the Jurassic and Cretaceous. Their rise to dominance has been linked to, among others, body size changes in their early history, especially across the Triassic-Jurassic boundary. However, to qualitatively assess such temporal trends, robust skeletal and trace fossil data sets are...

The main Karoo Basin of southern Africa contains the continental record of the end-Triassic, end-Permian, and end-Capitanian mass extinction events. Of these, the environmental drivers of the end-Capitanian are least known. Integrating quantitative stratigraphic architecture analysis from abundant outcrop profiles, paleocurrent measurements, and pe...

Kalosauropus, the ‘beautiful reptile track’, was collected from the Sinemurian–Pliensbachian lower Clarens Formation (upper Stormberg Group) in Lesotho in the 1950s. It was formally described in 2003 when it was transferred to Otozoum, an ichnogenus known in North America, Europe and Africa, and associated with basal sauropodomorphs. This transfer...

Swimming and subaqueous traces and trails are reported, for the first time, from a freshwater pond community in the middle Norian lower Elliot Formation (lEF) in the main Karoo Basin of South Africa. These ichnofossils, associated abiotic tool marks, and sedimentary structures are preserved on the upper bedding plane of a fine- to medium-grained sa...

A new ichnosite in southwest Lesotho (Upper Moyeni, Quthing District) is located within the uppermost part of the highly fossiliferous Elliot Formation, ~35 m below the conformably overlying Clarens Formation and ~65 m above the world-renowned Lower Moyeni ichnosite. While the Lower Moyeni site preserves diverse Early Jurassic ichnofossils, the ich...

The upper Stormberg Group of Lesotho has an abundant and diverse ichnological record that dates to the Early Jurassic. Herein, we re-evaluate a known ichnosite in the lowermost Clarens Formation (Karoo Supergroup) at Tsikoane in northern Lesotho. The site was reported to preserve tridactyl tracks as natural casts in the ceiling of overhangs and tru...

The Massospondylus Assemblage Zone is the youngest tetrapod biozone in the Karoo Basin (upper Stormberg Group, Karoo Supergroup) and records one of the oldest dinosaur dominated ecosystems in southern Gondwana. Recent qualitative and quantitative investigations into the biostratigraphy of the lower and upper Elliot formations (lEF, uEF) and Clarens...

The Scalenodontoides Assemblage Zone (SAZ) is the oldest fossil tetrapod biozone of the Stormberg Group (Karoo Supergroup) and preserves the oldest dinosaur bearing deposits in the Karoo Basin. The SAZ represents a revision of the ‘Euskelosaurus’ Range Zone, whose taxonomic basis has been undermined because ‘Euskelosaurus’ is well demonstrated to b...

Syn-rift deposits often provide the only means to determine the chronology of rift initiation and evolution. However, the earliest syn-rift packages deposited in Jurassic – Cretaceous rift basins that formed during the breakup of SW Gondwana are poorly understood because they are deeply buried beneath overlying passive margin sequences. The exhumed...

The Karoo igneous rocks represent one of the largest continental flood basalt events (by volume) on Earth, and are not normally associated with fossils remains. However, these Pliensbachian–Toarcian lava flows contain sandstone interbeds that are particularly common in the lower part of the volcanic succession and are occasionally fossiliferous. On...

The Permo‐Carboniferous–Lower Jurassic Karoo succession in the Central Kalahari Karoo Sub‐basin of Botswana is largely confined to the subsurface, and contains coal, coalbed methane and groundwater resources, similar to other Karoo strata throughout southern Africa. Characterization of the stratigraphic architecture (i.e., spatiotemporal stacking c...

Through comprehensive seismic, stratigraphic, and sedimentological analysis, this paper describes the stratigraphic architecture of the late Quaternary sediments and depositional dynamics in a region ~ 3.5 km offshore of the current south-west Namibian coastline. The landscape evolution model of this area is based on 2D seismic reflection profiles...

Containing one of the richest late Early to early Middle Triassic continental biotas globally, the Burgersdorp Formation of the main Karoo Basin in South Africa hosts a diverse vertebrate fossil assemblage. Comparatively, trace fossils in this unit are lesser known, and thus how the Burgersdorp biotas behaved and interacted with their palaeoenviron...

The taphonomy of a well preserved ophiuroid-stylophoran assemblage from the Bokkeveld Group, Lower Devonian of South Africa is described using micro-CT scanning techniques. This assemblage provides a taphonomic window into the structure of Early Devonian, echinoderm-dominated communities within the Malvinokaffric Realm of SW Gondwana. Micro-CT scan...

Gamiroaster tempestatis, a new genus and species of Palaeozoic ophiuroid, is described from four specimens identified in the Lower DevonianVoorstehoek Formation (Ceres Subgroup, Bokkeveld Group) of SouthAfrica. This ophiuroid belongs the family Protaseridae, a Middle–Late Ordovician taxon that continued into the late Palaeozoic. This new ophiuroid...

Gamiroaster tempestatis, a new genus and species of Palaeozoic ophiuroid, is described from four specimens identified in the Lower Devonian Voorstehoek Formation (Ceres Subgroup, Bokkeveld Group) of South Africa. This ophiuroid belongs the family Protaseridae, a Middle–Late Ordovician taxon that continued into the late Palaeozoic. This new ophiuroi...

There is no abstract

The Ha Nohana palaeosurface in southern Lesotho preserves tridactyl and tetradactyl tracks and trackways attributable to Early Jurassic bipedal, theropod-like dinosaurs. Complementary sedimentological and ichnological observations along the palaeosurface and in the strata below and above it allow detailed interpretations of climatically driven chan...

Background Taphonomic and palaeoecologic studies of obrution beds often employ conventional methods of investigation such as physical removal and extraction of fossils from their host rock (matrix) by mechanical preparation. This often-destructive method is not suitable for studying mould fossils, which are voids left in host rocks due to dissoluti...

New excavations at Border Cave use high-resolution techniques, including FT-IR, for sediment samples and thin sections of micromorphology blocks from stratigraphy. These show that sediments have different moisture regimes, both spatially and chronologically. The site preserves desiccated grass bedding in multiple layers and they, along with seeds,...

New excavations at Border Cave use high-resolution techniques, including FT-IR, for sediment samples and thin sections of micromorphology blocks from stratigraphy. These show that sediments have different moisture regimes, both spatially and chronologically. The site preserves desiccated grass bedding in multiple layers and they, along with seeds,...

Sauropod dinosaurs were dominant, bulk-browsing herbivores for 130 million years of the Mesozoic, attaining gigantic body masses in excess of 60 metric tons [1, 2]. A columnar-limbed, quadrupedal posture enabled these giant body sizes [3], but the nature of the transition from bipedal sauropodomorph ancestors to derived quadrupeds remains contentio...

Although dinosaurs are not considered habitual tail-draggers, there have been rare descriptions of dinosaur tail traces from the Jurassic and Cretaceous. Of the 38 globally reported dinosaur tail trace ichnosites, over 14 have been lost from the global stratigraphic record due to natural and anthropogenic factors. Most remaining occurrences of tail...

Wildfires and flooding events are common and are forceful intrinsic controls over landscape evolution, biodiversity, and preserved sediment architecture in dryland environments. Charcoal-bearing Holocene flood sediments of the upper Huis River provide a rare perspective on the powerful and episodic sedimentary processes in a bedrock-confined fluvia...

Since the advent of technologically efficient exploitation of economic hydrocarbon reservoirs in shales, increasingly more research has been devoted to identifying and characterizing pore systems within shales. However, only a handful of these studies focused on the development of porosity in thermally mature unconventional reservoirs. In this stud...

The Lower Jurassic Clarens Formation is a sandstone-dominated unit that extends from its type area in the main Karoo Basin into a large part of southern Africa with a gross lithological uniformity that is one of its key diagnostic features. The impressive cream sandstone cliffs of the unit are often undercut and form shallow caves. Stratigraphicall...

Diamictites and associated glacigenic rocks of the Tshidzi Formation represent the Permo-Carboniferous Dwyka Group (Karoo Supergroup) in the Karoo-age basins, i.e. Tshipise, Tuli, Northern Lebombo, Ellisras and Springbok Flats, that are situated North of the main Karoo Basin of South Africa. This lowermost Karoo unit represents the onset and develo...

The collection and dissemination of vertebrate ichnological data is struggling to keep up with techniques that are becoming commonplace in the wider palaeontological field. A standard protocol is required to ensure that data is recorded, presented and archived in a manner that will be useful both to contemporary researchers, and to future generatio...

A palaeosurface with one megatheropod trackway and several theropod tracks and trackways from the Lower Jurassic upper Elliot Formation (Stormberg Group, Karoo Supergroup) in western Lesotho is described. The majority of the theropod tracks are referable to either Eubrontes or Kayentapus based on their morphological characteristics. The larger mega...

The latest Triassic is notable for coinciding with the dramatic decline of many previously dominant groups, followed by the rapid radiation of Dinosauria in the Early Jurassic. Among the most common terrestrial vertebrates from this time, sauropodomorph dinosaurs provide an important insight into the changing dynamics of the biota across the Triass...

The end-Triassic mass extinction and the transition and explosive diversification of fauna over the Triassic-Jurassic boundary is poorly understood and poorly represented in the rock record of the Southern Hemisphere. This is despite the rich diversity in both body and trace fossils of Triassic-Jurassic age in southern Africa, which is not found in...

Since the technologically efficient exploitation of economic hydrocarbon reservoirs in shales, increasingly more research has been devoted to identifying and characterizing pore systems within shales. However, only a handful of these studies focused on the development of porosity in thermally mature unconventional reservoirs. In this study, the evo...

The Jurassic - Cretaceous Kirkwood Formation forms part of the Uitenhage Group, the earliest deposits to fill Mesozoic rift basins that developed in what is now the southern Cape of South Africa during the breakup of Gondwana. The Kirkwood Formation is not only palaeontologically extremely important, having yielded diverse assemblages of vertebrate...

The Lower Permian Pietermaritzburg Formation is a mudrock-dominated, upward-coarsening stratigraphic unit in the lower Ecca Group (Karoo Supergroup) in the northeastern part of the main Karoo Basin of South Africa. The formation extends over most of the KwaZulu-Natal Province, and due to its lithology and the local climate, it is usually poorly exp...

The formal ichnotaxonomic assignment of a new ichnogenus and ichnospecies, Reniformichnus katikatii, is presented based on the holotype and several field specimens from the Lower Triassic Katberg Formation in the main Karoo Basin of South Africa. The holotype is an inclined, burrow cast with bilobate base and reniform cross-section. Its width range...

Fragmentary caudal ends of the left and right mandible assigned to Lesothosaurus diagnosticus, an early ornithischian, was recently discovered in the continental red bed succession of the upper Elliot Formation (Lower Jurassic) at Likhoele Mountain (Mafeteng District) in Lesotho. Using micro-CT scanning, this mandible could be digitally reconstruct...

Left maxilla of NM QR 3076 in (A) medial, (B) lateral, and (C) ventromedial view

Georeferences of fossil localities for a total of 46 Lesothosaurus diagnosticus and other Lesothosaurus cf. diagnosticus specimens in the upper Elliot Formation of Lesotho and South Africa Abbreviations NHMUK, The Natural History Museum, London BMNH, British Museum of Natural History, London MNHM, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris BPI, Be...

MicroCT scan images of the left dentary of Lesothosaurus BP/I/7853 showing transverse view of replacement tooth

Locality information pertaining to the 46 Lesothosaurus diagnosticus and Lesothosaurus cf. diagnosticus specimens in the upper Elliot Formatio NHMUK, The Natural History Museum, London BMNH, British Museum of Natural History, London MNHM, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris BPI, Bernard Price Institute of Palaeontology, Johannesburg, South...

The nine preserved dentary alveoli from tooth positions 10 –18 of BP/1/7853 in comparison to the adapted illustration of Sereno’s (1991: Fig. 13H) The nine preserved dentary alveoli from tooth positions 10 –18 of BP/1/7853 in comparison to the adapted illustration of Sereno’s (1991: Fig. 13H) reconstruction of the mandible in Lesothosaurus. The nin...

MicroCT scan images of the left dentary of Lesothosaurus BP/I/7853 showing transverse view of replacement tooth behind tooth position 12

3D image reconstruction and segmentation of teeth in left dentary of Lesothosaurus BP/I/7853 showing buccal and lingual view of replacement teeth (shown in blue) behind and underlying teeth at positions 3 and 8

In Gondwana, Early Jurassic dinosaur track sites are especially concentrated in Lesotho. Despite intensive investigations during the third quarter of the twentieth century, a limited number of vertebrate track sites of this country have been studied with rigorous ichnological and sedimentological methodology. Here, we present a previously mentioned...

Vertebrate burrows are common ichnofossils in the Permo-Triassic of the main Karoo Basin in South Africa. They are generally attributable to one of several lineages of therapsid, including the derived clade known as cynodonts. Despite the presence of cynodont species in the Upper Triassic and Lower Jurassic of the Karoo Supergroup, vertebrate burro...

The Lower Permian Whitehill Formation in the Karoo Basin is a potential shale gas unit in South Africa. Recharacterizing this heterogeneous formation and explaining the spatiotemporal variations in its geometry, texture, bedding features, composition, and distribution of organic carbon content is necessary, because gas recovery can be strongly infl...

Located within the continental red beds of the upper Elliot Formation (Eastern Cape, South Africa), the Lower Jurassic Pronksberg bentonite is in close proximity to the boundary between the Triassic and Jurassic, which coincides with one of Earth’s largest mass extinction events. Sedimentological, mineralogical, and major and trace element geochemi...

The lowermost unit of the Table Mountain Group (Cape Supergroup), the Ordovician Piekenierskloof Formation is a siliciclastic succession that formed during the initial stages of the Cape Basin development in southwest Gondwana. This contemporary sedimentological re-evaluation of the depositional history and provenance of the Piekenierskloof Formati...

An Early Triassic continental ichnofossil assemblage dominated by ~ 4 cm diameter burrow casts was discovered in the transitional zone of the Katberg and Burgersdorp formations in the SE main Karoo Basin (Eastern Cape, South Africa). Analyses of the burrow architecture and associated sedimentary facies aim to identify the possible trace makers, the...

Footprint morphology (e.g., outline shape, depth of impression) is one of the key diagnostic features used in the interpretation of ancient vertebrate tracks. Over 80 tridactyl tracks, confined to the same bedding surface in the Lower Jurassic Elliot Formation at Mafube (eastern Free State, South Africa), show large shape variability over the lengt...

Additional anatomical measurements of Mafube tracks relating to the size differential between morphotypes A and B at the Mafube dinosaur track site Additional anatomical measurements of Mafube tracks relating to the size differential between morphotypes A and B at the Mafube dinosaur track site. See Fig. 2B for how the interdigit (i.e., divaricatio...

The Mesozoic Rift Basins of the Western and Eastern Cape demonstrate a dichotomy in extant research. The Uitenhage Group sediments and their palaeontological heritage in the Algoa Basin are well- researched, in contrast to poorly documented onshore compartments of the Oudtshoorn, Heidelberg, Gamtoos and Pletmos Sub-Basins. This presents a problem i...

Along the southern margin of South Africa, intermountain rift successions, which comprise unusually large, rounded granite boulders and other coarse clastics, reveal an important geological history about the mid-Mesozoic extensional tectonics that lead to the break-up of Gondwana. These strata, mapped as part of the Mid to Upper Jurassic Enon Forma...

The Triassic-Jurassic boundary marks a global faunal turnover event that is generally considered as the third largest of five major biological crises in the Phanerozoic geological record of Earth. Determining the controlling factors of this event and their relative contributions to the biotic turnover associated with it is on-going globally. The Up...

The Lower Devonian (Emsian) Voorstehoek Formation is a siliciclastic unit within the Ceres Subgroup of the Bokkeveld Group in South Africa that comprises mudstones and siltstones. This fossiliferous unit contains a highly endemic marine benthic biota of the cool to cold water Malvinokaffric Realm of southwestern Gondwana. The paleontological and se...

Recent interest in the shale gas potential in the main Karoo Basin of South Africa has focused attention mainly on the carbonaceous Whitehill Formation (Ecca Group, Karoo Supergroup). To unravel the metamorphic effect of the Lower Jurassic Karoo igneous intrusions on the Lower Permian Whitehill Formation, outcrop samples were taken at various dista...

The middle (?) to upper Permian Emakwezini Formation is part of the lower Beaufort Group (Karoo Supergroup) in the Lebombo Basin in the eastern part of South Africa. The unit is highly significant both palaeobotanically and economically due to its plant-rich carbonaceous mudstones and multiple semi-anthracite to anthracite seams that range in thick...

The Late Triassic to Early Jurassic Elliot Formation is part of the Stormberg Group (Karoo Supergroup) of South Africa. The unit is significant palaeontlologically, because it preserves not only a range of vertebrate fossils, but also a plethora of ichnofossil and encompasses the boundary of Triassic and Jurassic in Southern Africa. The Formation i...

The Algoa Basin is an onshore rift basin filled by an Upper Mesozoic non-marine and shallow marine sedimentary sequence. The middle unit of this clastic succession is assigned to the Lower Cretaceous Kirkwood Formation, known to host a wealth of plant and animal fossils together with poorly documented lignites, amber and charcoal clasts. This study...