Qualla: Ntawere Formation https://qualla.com/ntawere-formation en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:26 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Ntawere Formation https://qualla.com/ntawere-formation Ntawere Formation: Introduction https://qualla.com/ntawere-formation/ Long before there was a Luangwa Valley, there was a floodplain. Rivers braided through a hot, seasonally dry landscape. Between the rains, puddles shrank and cracked. Between the channels, mud settled slow and quiet. Animals died and their bones were buried in calcareous nodules, and after 245 million years of geology - after Pangaea split, after the dinosaurs rose and fell, after an ape stood up on two legs in a valley not far from here - those bones began to emerge again, weathered out of red mudstone at the surface of what paleontologists now call the Ntawere Formation. This is Middle Triassic Zambia. It is a window on the world that came before ours.

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/w/p/d/ntawere-formation-wp/kwpd-ntawere-formation-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Ntawere Formation: Reading the Rocks https://qualla.com/ntawere-formation/ The Ntawere Formation is not one rock but a stack of them, each telling a different story about water. The coarsest layers are trough cross-bedded conglomeratic sandstones full of mineral concretions - these are the channels, the places where Triassic rivers once ran fast enough ...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/w/p/d/ntawere-formation-wp/kwpd-ntawere-formation-reading-the-rocks.mp3 0:06 2 full Ntawere Formation: Lower and Upper https://qualla.com/ntawere-formation/ The formation splits into two halves, and the split matters. The Lower Ntawere is dominated by coarse channel sandstones, suggesting a floodplain that was active - rivers constantly cutting new paths, dumping sand in their wake. The Upper Ntawere is dominated by quiet mudstones, ...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/w/p/d/ntawere-formation-wp/kwpd-ntawere-formation-lower-and-upper.mp3 0:06 3 full Ntawere Formation: The Cast of Characters https://qualla.com/ntawere-formation/ The Ntawere preserves three great groups of Triassic animals. Synapsids - the forerunners of mammals, though not mammals themselves - are represented by dicynodonts, those pig-snouted herbivores with two tusks that dominated Middle Triassic ecosystems worldwide. Archosaurs - the ...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/w/p/d/ntawere-formation-wp/kwpd-ntawere-formation-the-cast-of-characters.mp3 0:06 4 full Ntawere Formation: A Global Triassic https://qualla.com/ntawere-formation/ Zambia's Ntawere does not stand alone. It has counterparts across what was then the supercontinent Pangaea - the Donguz Formation in Russia, the Ermaying in China, the Manda in Tanzania just to the north, the Omingonde in Namibia, the Rio Seco de la Quebrada in Argentina, the Yer...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/w/p/d/ntawere-formation-wp/kwpd-ntawere-formation-a-global-triassic.mp3 0:06 5 full