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Geological Formations

Ellisras Basin

Sedimentary and Stratigraphic Formations

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The Ellisras Basin is a sedimentary basin that spans the border between South Africa and Botswana, extending west from the town of Lephalale in South Africa's Limpopo province. It is an asymmetrical half graben roughly 310 to 180 million years old, holding sedimentary rocks of the Karoo Supergroup up to 1,500 meters thick over a basement of Waterberg Group sandstone, Limpopo Belt mafic rock and the Bushveld Complex. Its coal beds, the Waterberg Coalfield in South Africa and the Mmamabula coalfield in Botswana, are a major economic resource, and deeper coal beds are estimated to hold about one trillion cubic feet of coalbed methane gas.

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