Karoo chat Karoo chat The Karoo chat ("Emarginata schlegelii") is a small passerine bird of the Old World flycatcher family Muscicapidae. It is a common resident breeder in southwesternmost Angola, western Namibia and western South Africa. Its habitat is Karoo and desert scrub in the south, extending to the escarpment zone in the north. The first formal description of the Karoo chat was by the Swedish naturalist Johan August Wahlberg in 1855 under the binomial name "Erithacus schlegelii". The species was subsequently placed in the genus "Cercomela" introduced by Charles Lucien Bonaparte in 1856. It was moved to its current genus, "Emarginata",
Karoo plain with Mississippi-like rivers depositing mud from an immense range of mountains to the south. Ancient reptiles and amphibians prospered in the wet forests, and their remains have made the Karoo famous amongst palaeontologists. The first of these Karoo fossils was discovered in 1838 by Scots-born Andrew Geddes Bain at a road cutting near Fort Beaufort. He sent his specimens to the British Museum, where fellow Scotsman Robert Broom recognised the Karoo fossils' mammal-like characteristics in 1897. After the Beaufort period, Southern Africa (still part of Gondwana) became an arid sand desert with only ephemeral rivers and pans. These sands