Gondwana Alive

Gondwana Alive We are a non-profit company. Our overarching goal is to become a global Fellowship of nature lovers acting to celebrate, protect & restore biodiversity.

Happy Friday everybody! Let’s explore a few places to visit from this corridor:Bioko, known as “Monkey Paradise”, and is...
21/08/2026

Happy Friday everybody! Let’s explore a few places to visit from this corridor:
Bioko, known as “Monkey Paradise”, and is made up of 2 volcanic massifs and a trio of crater lakes. This island is a dense forest situated 160km odd the mainland of Equatorial Guinea. It has biodiversity that cannot be compared to anywhere else. 11 species of primate live here; including the highly endangered Drill.

The Grasslands Kingdoms. Here volcanic soil provided perfect conditions for people to build palaces. Today the kingdoms are used for constitutional purposes and a chiefdom that consists of a rich culture.

Mount Djim in Cameroon is a historic mountain that dominates the town of Galim-Tignère. Its caves were the places where hundreds of people took refuge while fleeing from German colonialists. It is also a focal point for many cultural festivals.

We hope you enjoyed our posts on this extraordinary part of the world!🌏

So, what people and cultures developed along this corridor? The mountains and lakes influenced the growth of the culture...
20/08/2026

So, what people and cultures developed along this corridor? The mountains and lakes influenced the growth of the cultures. People settled where the land provided the most opportunities:

The Nok civilization came to be on the Jos Plateau where iron ore, wood and environmental conditions were favourable to support iron smelting.

The Sao civilization flourished in the wetlands near Lake Chad where fish, water, fertile soils and trade routes met.

The Grasslands Kingdoms built their palaces and centres around fertile volcanic landscapes.

The Adamawa Plateau and the forests and savannahs nearby were an important centre of Bantu migration where people would spread south and east over thousands of years across Africa.

Before all of these were early modern humans who arose in Africa around 200,000 years ago. After thousands of years, these people split off into the San hunter-gatherers. There was a further split off where the Baka ancestors became distinct, settling in the Western African Rainforests. The main human line continued to diversify, creating the Nok, Sao and Bantu people's who spread across Africa becoming the cultures we know today. 👣🌱

Not only is this corridor a lush landscape created by historic volcanoes, but it is a journey through the profound biodi...
19/08/2026

Not only is this corridor a lush landscape created by historic volcanoes, but it is a journey through the profound biodiversity in Africa. On an island called Bioko, a cluster of connected mountains and a trio of crater lakes rise beneath a dense forest. Eleven species of primate call this their home. One of these species is the Drill, one Africa’s most endangered primates. 🦧

Other islands further south hold worlds of plants and animals like nothing seen anywhere else. São Tomé is an amphibians’ playground, while Príncipe is where geological isolation helped forge remarkable and unique biodiversity. 🌺

All the mountains, craters, islands have been formed by volcanoes erupting over millions of years. While some of those v...
18/08/2026

All the mountains, craters, islands have been formed by volcanoes erupting over millions of years. While some of those volcanoes have gone quiet, others are still active today! Mount Cameroon, which rises dramatically from the coast is still a geological hazard. North of that is an environment splashed with extinct volcanic craters. The volcanic soil has provided a fertile place for forests, grasslands and people. 🌳🌋

This week we are exploring the Africa Pole Rotation Corridor, or what we will call Africa Across the Cameroon Hotspot. T...
17/08/2026

This week we are exploring the Africa Pole Rotation Corridor, or what we will call Africa Across the Cameroon Hotspot. This corridor is a line that was shaped by movement, fire and time. 🔥

A remarkable line of mountains volcanoes and islands have created a great arc across the landscape from the highlands of Nigeria south eastwards to through Cameroon, coming out at the Gulf of Guinea. ⛰️

It is known as the Cameroon Volcanic Line which spans for 1600 kilometres. We will investigate its shape, biodiversity and culture, so buckle up for an interesting journey.🤠
Photo: https://www.saotomeexpert.pt/en/sao-tome-geology-of-principe-island/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Today, we look at some places to visit along this diverse corridor The Umkomaas Valley is among the richest fossil plant...
14/08/2026

Today, we look at some places to visit along this diverse corridor
The Umkomaas Valley is among the richest fossil plant sites in the world. It is a scenic river valley situated in KwaZulu-Natal. This is the most historic of 100 fossil plant sites collected in the Late Triassic Molteno Formation which is said to be the richest pre-angiosperm plant horizon globally. The site has held 75 species of plants, both non-gymnosperm and gymnosperm. What is more is that it yields diverse species of insect. 🍃

Graaf-Reinet falls in the Endothiodon (herbivorous dinosaur) Zone. At one time it held 68 species of dinosaur. It is the sixth oldest town in South Africa and the oldest town in the Eastern Cape. The top attractions include The Camdeboo National park where you can see game and do some bird watching. There is historical architecture such as Cape Dutch and Victorian homes which includes the Reinet House Museum. 🦕

Golden Gate National Park is where we find a dinosaur nesting site that is 190 million years old – the oldest yet discovered. At least 10 Massospondylus nests with 34 clustered eggs were discovered along a singular road cutting. This gave us a good look into the reproduction of dinosaurs. 🥚

Although dinosaurs existed in this period way before people, a culture was in fact born through this corridor. The first...
13/08/2026

Although dinosaurs existed in this period way before people, a culture was in fact born through this corridor. The first people coming through the Karoo didn’t see it as a geological feature. To them it was the water, animals, plants, shelters and stone they noticed. They also read the landscape which proved crucial to their survival. 🌱

The climate changed more times than once. Sometimes the conditions brought wet weather and sometimes it became drier. Plants moved, animals moved and so did the people. From the early Stone Age people, including the ancestors of today's San culture, hunted and gathered, made tools and continuously shared knowledge by telling stories and making art.🎨

Places like Nelspoort reveal engraved rocks and archaeological remains of human engagement over thousands of years. 🔍
Photo from Pixabay: https://pixabay.com/photos/landscape-nature-mountains-heaven-4932848/

Traversing the Karoo from South Africa's Drakensburg mountains to the Western Cape is an extraordinary heritage corridor...
12/08/2026

Traversing the Karoo from South Africa's Drakensburg mountains to the Western Cape is an extraordinary heritage corridor. The rocks and fossils in this landscape are proof of change in the earth and its fauna and flora from around 325 - 175 million years ago. Through ice caps, continental drift, asteroids hitting the earth and constant swings in climate, life adapted, diversified and proliferated. Mass extinction events are all captured in incredible fossil libraries, like the Molteno collection.

300 million years ago the Karoo was covered by an ice cap. When it melted, rivers flowed through wide floodplains, lakes formed and disappeared, forests and lush vegetation covered the whole land. It was different to the sparsely vegetated plains we see today and yet the incredible diversity that arose out of constant change remains visible in the succulents of the Karoo.

Along with the lush landscape of long ago, came diverse animal life. The animals that were around then were like nothing we know today. There were huge herbivores, predators and many were ancestors of the animals that evolved much later. These animals reproduced, moved across the landscape and eventually disappeared. Life continued to emerge and moved with the landscape that was constantly changing.

So if you walk across the dramatic Drakensberg or the dry landscapes of the Western Cape, remember that way beneath you, is 150 million years of the Earth’s history.
Photo from: DesmandTwo2, Pixabay

Everchanging, fascinating, diverse. These three words describe the Great Karoo Corridor. This place along with its histo...
11/08/2026

Everchanging, fascinating, diverse.
These three words describe the Great Karoo Corridor. This place along with its history is a place that seems like something out of Indiana Jones! 🦅

Grab your adventure hat because we are in for a rich and adventurous time of learning about how the land was shaped, its fossils, flora and fauna. Follow us to discover amazing places to visit at the end of the week! 📍🔍

Here are some places to visit for Snowball Earth Corridor:The Swakop River Canyon has rocky outcrops (Swakop Facies) wit...
07/08/2026

Here are some places to visit for Snowball Earth Corridor:
The Swakop River Canyon has rocky outcrops (Swakop Facies) with evidence of sea-level changes, ice-sheet dynamics, and interglacial melting phases directly linked to Snowball Earth. Lying over this glacial rock is a layer of cap carbonate formed in warm seas and containing microfossils. This indicates that the climate changed rapidly and life survived Snowball Earth. 🐚

Cape Cross is a seal nature reserve located off the Atlantic shore of Namibia. It is known for being a breeding ground for the largest colony of Cape fur seals. It was also the landing site of Diogo Cão, a Portuguese navigator in 1486. There is a boardwalk for the public to observe the seals safely. 🌊

The Etosha Pan is home to the Ramsar wetland site, a wide salt pan surrounded by a savannah that is home to a variety of mammals. Etosha means Great White Place. It has lakebeds that form part of the Etosha National Park and it can be seen from space! The Etosha Pan is an ever changing place depending on the season, having little growing in dry seasons and becoming a lake with mineral-rich water where flamingos breed in the rainy seasons. 🌧️

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