The Witteberg or Witteberge is a South African mountain range just off the south-west corner of

Lesotho Lesotho ( ), officially the Kingdom of Lesotho, is a country landlocked as an enclave in South Africa. It is situated in the Maloti Mountains and contains the highest mountains in Southern Africa. It has an area of over and has a populatio ...

. The range, which rises to 2408 metres, stretches for about 60 km from

Lundin's Neck Lundin's Neck also written as Lundean's Nek, is a pass across the Witteberge range, an outlier of the Drakensberg, at the extreme southern tip of Lesotho. It is situated in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, on the regional road R393, ...

in the east to Lady Grey in the west. The range lends its name to the Witteberg Series, the uppermost

fossiliferous A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved in ...

sequence of the

Cape System The Cape Fold Belt is a fold and thrust belt of late Paleozoic age, which affected the sequence of sedimentary rock layers of the Cape Supergroup in the southwestern corner of South Africa. It was originally continuous with the Ventana Mo ...

of sedimentary rocks in South Africa. The Witteberg Series (340-375 Ma) consists of

clastic Clastic rocks are composed of fragments, or clasts, of pre-existing minerals and rock. A clast is a fragment of geological detritus,Essentials of Geology, 3rd Ed, Stephen Marshak, p. G-3 chunks, and smaller grains of rock broken off other rock ...

, shoreline deposits of shales, sandstones, and quartzites, and lies below the plant-bearing and glacial beds of the Lower

Karoo System The Karoo Supergroup is the most widespread stratigraphic unit in Africa south of the Kalahari Desert. The supergroup consists of a sequence of units, mostly of nonmarine origin, deposited between the Late Carboniferous and Early Jurassic, a peri ...

. The Witteberg Series has yielded fossil fragments of ''

Lepidodendron ''Lepidodendron'' is an extinct genus of primitive vascular plants belonging to the family Lepidodendraceae, part of a group of Lycopodiopsida known as scale trees or arborescent lycophytes, related to quillworts and lycopsids (club mosses). T ...

''-like plants and large numbers of the

ichnogenus An ichnotaxon (plural ichnotaxa) is "a taxon based on the fossilized work of an organism", i.e. the non-human equivalent of an artifact. ''Ichnotaxa'' comes from the Greek ίχνος, ''ichnos'' meaning ''track'' and ταξις, ''taxis'' meaning ...

known as '' Spirophyton''. The upper part of the series is also rich in

palaeoniscoid Palaeoniscidae is an extinct family of ray-finned fishes (Actinopterygii) ascribed to the order Palaeonisciformes. The family includes the genus ''Palaeoniscum'' and potentially other Palaeozoic and Mesozoic early actinopterygian genera. The nam ...

fauna. In 1969, Brian G. Gardiner FLS, Professor of Palaeontology at King's College, described 7 new genera and species from here – ''Australichthys longidorsalis'', ''Aestuarichthys fulcratus'', ''Willomorichthys striatulus'', ''Sundayichthys elegantulus'', ''

Dwykia ''Dwykia'' is an extinct genus of prehistoric bony fish. See also * Prehistoric fish * List of prehistoric bony fish A ''list'' is any set of items in a row. List or lists may also refer to: People * List (surname) Organizations * Li ...

analensis'', ''Adroichthys tuberculatus'' and ''Soetendalichthys cromptoni''. Two new families were also added to the fauna, the ''Willomorichthyidae'' and the ''Dwykiidae''.Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society Volume 48, Issue 4, pages 423–452, November 1969
/ref> The Witteberge range in the Eastern Free State on the north-west corner of

is an unrelated mountain. 'Witteberg' (white mountain) is a common name in South Africa for any mountain lofty enough to show snowfall during winter.

References

Mountain ranges of the Eastern Cape Geology of South Africa {{EasternCape-geo-stub