The Naukluft Mountains (

Afrikaans Afrikaans is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language spoken in South Africa, Namibia and to a lesser extent Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and also Argentina where there is a group in Sarmiento, Chubut, Sarmiento that speaks the Pat ...

and

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

: ''Naukluftberge'') are a mountain range in central

Namibia Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country on the west coast of Southern Africa. Its borders include the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south; in the no ...

. The southern part of the mountain range forms the easternmost part of the

Namib-Naukluft National Park The Namib-Naukluft National Park is a national park in western Namibia, situated between the coast of the Atlantic Ocean and the edge of the Great Escarpment. It encompasses part of the Namib Desert (considered the world's oldest desert), the ...

. The northern mountains are occupied by privately held farms. They are known for their wildlife, including

mountain zebra The mountain zebra (''Equus zebra'') is a zebra species in the family Equidae, native to southwestern Africa. There are two subspecies, the Cape mountain zebra (''E. z. zebra'') found in South Africa and Hartmann's mountain zebra (''E. z. hartma ...

s and

leopard The leopard (''Panthera pardus'') is one of the five extant cat species in the genus ''Panthera''. It has a pale yellowish to dark golden fur with dark spots grouped in rosettes. Its body is slender and muscular reaching a length of with a ...

s. The mountains have many small streams and

waterfall A waterfall is any point in a river or stream where water flows over a vertical drop or a series of steep drops. Waterfalls also occur where meltwater drops over the edge of a tabular iceberg or ice shelf. Waterfalls can be formed in seve ...

s. ''Naukluft'' is the

Namibian German Namibia is a multilingual country in which German is recognised as a national language. While English has been the sole official language of the country since 1990, in many areas of the country, German enjoys official status at a community level ...

rendering of the Afrikaans , meaning "narrow

ravine A ravine is a landform that is narrower than a canyon and is often the product of streambank erosion. Ravines are typically classified as larger in scale than gullies, although smaller than valleys. Ravines may also be called a cleuch, dell, ...

", from ('narrow', cf Dutch ) and ('ravine', cf German ).

Geology

The Naukluft Mountains are a

nappe In geology, a nappe or thrust sheet is a large sheetlike body of rock that has been moved more than or above a thrust fault from its original position. Nappes form in compressional tectonic settings like continental collision zones or on the ...

complex: a stack of rock units which have been transported toward the southeast on a basal

thrust fault A thrust fault is a break in the Earth's crust, across which older rocks are pushed above younger rocks. Thrust geometry and nomenclature Reverse faults A thrust fault is a type of reverse fault that has a dip of 45 degrees or less. I ...

. The first geological maps and cross-sections of the mountain range were made in the 1930s by

Henno Martin Henno Martin (15 March 1910 – 7 January 1998) was a German professor of geology who, along with Hermann Korn, lived for two and a half years in the Namib Desert to avoid internment during the Second World War. Personal life Martin was bor ...

and Hermann Korn. The rocks are interbedded sediments, dominated by

dolomites The Dolomites ( ), also known as the Dolomite Mountains, Dolomite Alps or Dolomitic Alps, are a mountain range in northeastern Italy. They form part of the Southern Limestone Alps and extend from the River Adige in the west to the Piave Va ...

quartzite Quartzite is a hard, non- foliated metamorphic rock that was originally pure quartz sandstone.Essentials of Geology, 3rd Edition, Stephen Marshak, p 182 Sandstone is converted into quartzite through heating and pressure usually related to tecton ...

s and

shale Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock formed from mud that is a mix of flakes of Clay mineral, clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g., Kaolinite, kaolin, aluminium, Al2Silicon, Si2Oxygen, O5(hydroxide, OH)4) and tiny f ...

s, deposited in a shallow marine environment in the hinterland of the Damara orogeny between 700-500 million years ago. The sediments are equivalent in age to the

Otavi Otavi is a town with 10,000 inhabitants in the Otjozondjupa Region of Namibia. Situated 360 km north of Windhoek, it is the district capital of the Otavi electoral constituency. Geography The towns of Otavi, Tsumeb (to the north) and Gr ...

Mountainlands sediments, where evidence for

snowball earth The Snowball Earth is a historical geology, geohistorical hypothesis that proposes that during one or more of Earth's greenhouse and icehouse Earth, icehouse climates, the planet's planetary surface, surface became nearly entirely freezing, fr ...

climates was described by Paul F. Hoffman. The same

lithologies The lithology of a rock unit is a description of its physical characteristics visible at outcrop, in hand or core samples, or with low magnification microscopy. Physical characteristics include colour, texture, grain size, and composition. Lith ...

are present in the Naukluft Mountains, but the sediments are folded and faulted, so the original stratigraphy is deformed and inverted. The mountain range has been the site of numerous studies seeking to explain the mechanical paradox of overthrusts: How large thin units of rock may be pushed long distances over gently dipping thrust faults. The main basal thrust fault beneath the

klippe 350px, Schematic overview of a thrust system. The shaded material is called a window or fenster. The klippe is the isolated block of the nappe overlying autochthonous material. A klippe ( German for cliff">German language">German for cliff or c ...

which forms the mountain range contains an unusual polymineralic granular rock which has been described by some authors as an injected

evaporite An evaporite () is a water- soluble sedimentary mineral deposit that results from concentration and crystallization by evaporation from an aqueous solution. There are two types of evaporite deposits: marine, which can also be described as oce ...

,Behr and Schmidt-Mumm (1987) The role of sedimentary and tectonic brines in the Damara Orogen, Namibia, Applied Geochemistry v. 2, n. 5-6, 535-542 and by others as a fault rock formed by alteration during earthquake slip.Rowe, Fagereng, Miller and Mapani (2012) Signature of coseismic decarbonation in dolomitic fault rocks of the Naukluft Thrust, Namibia. Earth & Planetary Science Letters v. 333-334, 200-210 Most workers agree that the lubricating effect of this granular layer helped the thrust fault slip when the fault was active.Viola, Mancktelow, and Miller (2006) Cyclic frictional-viscous slip oscillations along the base of an advancing nappe complex: Insights into brittle-ductile nappe emplacement mechanisms from the Naukluft Nappe Complex, central Namibia. Tectonics v. 25, n. 3

References

{{Coord, 24, 10, S, 16, 10, E, region:NA_type:mountain, display=title Mountain ranges of Namibia Geography of Hardap Region Namibian savanna woodlands Namib-Naukluft National Park