Karoo Supergroup of the country, and in the Lebombo mountains along the Mozambique border. Once the layer of hard lava was eroded away, the softer Karoo sediments over the rest of the basin eroded even faster. However, the dolerite sills resisted erosion, protecting the softer Beaufort and Ecca shales beneath them. This created numerous and widespread flat topped hills, known as Karoo Koppies ("koppie" being the Afrikaans term for hill), which are iconic of the Karoo, and, by extension, the South African landscape. The dykes, or vertical fissures which brought the lava to the surface stand out today as linear ridges extending
Karoo north of the Great Karoo. Great locust swarms also frequently invaded or arose in the Great Karoo, and still occur from time to time today. The riverine rabbit, a critically endangered animal, lives exclusively in seasonal river basins and a very particular set of scrubland in the central semiarid region in the Karoo. It is hunted by falconiformes and Verreaux's eagles. Its numbers have been consistently lowering due to destruction of its habitat. They are unique relative to similar species through how they are polygamous and how each female can only produce one or two offspring per year. The introduction