Between Agulhas and Benguela: responses of Southern African climates of the Late Pleistocene to Current Fluxes, Orbital Precession and the Extent of the Circum-Antarctic Vortex

Terrestrial records for the Middle Pleistocene of Southern Africa are sparse and mostly fragmentary because the landscape was largely devoid of suitable depositories. Fortunately, one continuous lacustrine sequence, that of the Tswaing impact crater near Pretoria, South Africa (Fig. 1), spans the period from ~200 kyr to the present. Recent analyses of marine cores off the west coast of Southern Africa have, in addition, vouchsafed important proxy evidence of palaeo-wind regimes, periods of aridity and terrestrial flora.A generalised, but largely consistent, picture of palaeoenvironmental fluctuations during Isotope Stage 6 can therefore be drawn.