The main paleogeographic feature is a large enclosed, often anoxic, brackish sea within the foreland to the Cape Belt mountains (Bastos et al 2021) , covering the Parana and Great Karoo Basin, which is underfilled at this time. (Catuneanu 2005). The Permian rifts of southern Africa were in a syn-rift phase at this time, often being infilled by lacustrine shales (Macgregor, 2018).  In the north, most topography is interpreted to be associated with a series of broad folds across North Africa that run parallel to the Hercynian belt that were the sites of later deep erosion represented by the Hercynian subcrop pattern. The Djeffara (DJ, Gabtni et al, 2009)) and Sicani (SI) rifts are infilled with shallow to deep marine strata, these basins seemingly bordering carbonate platforms occupying much of western Tethys (Scotese, 2017). It is puzzling, with the Hercynian belt close by, why are so few clastics in this region.

At this time the South Pole is located in Antarctica and Africa is entirely in the southern hemisphere, ranging from the paleoequator to approx 60 deg S. As would be expected for such a range, sedimentological descriptions indicate a wide range of environments ranging from humid tropical in Morocco (Olsen, 2000)  to cool temperate peat bog in the coal belt (Cairncross, 2001) . Climate has warmed progressively from a glacial episode in the latest Carboniferous and continues to changes with time over the Permian as Africa rapidly moves northwards (Visser, 1995).

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Many of the rifts in southern Africa now seem to be in a phase of passive fill by fluvial redbeds (Macgregor (2018). Following a stratigraphic hiatus in the Ladinian which could mark the final movements on the Cape Fold Belt (CFB), the Great Karoo (GK) Basin is well into an overfilled phase (Catuneanu et al, 2005). The Djeffara Basin of Tunisia/Libya has now filled and is the site of carbonate-evaporite deposition (Khouni, 2018), consistent with the general carbonate-dominated sediment pattern of western Tethys.

Africa is now moving rapidly northwards, which as Africa is fixed on these maps, is shown as a southern migration of paleolatitude belts.  The plotted data points on indicator minerals such as evaporites seem to indicate at least seasonal aridity over most of the continent (Boucot et al, 2013), with humid episodes around the NW African rifts (Olsen, 2000: Manspeizer, 1988) and in southern Africa. Many authors believe that parts of the Carnian were more humid than other Late Triassic eras. On the margins of the Great Karoo (GK) basin, the flora and fauna of the Molteno Formation (Cairncross, 2001) indicate warm temperate conditions with semi-humid and humid periods allowing marshlands to form. There are no indicators of the existence of any significant topography, though this interval is generally beyond the AFTA ‘clock’, so this may due to a lack of any surviving evidence in rocks of this age