Geologic formation database for Africa with projections onto plate reconstructions

It is a challenge to obtain information about the geologic formations and their succession in Africa due to lack of on-line lexicons for most regions.  Therefore, we established AfricaLex as a free public online database that includes details on the geologic formations in all major basins, onshore and offshore, of Africa. AfricaLex (https://africalex.geolex.org/) offers search for geologic formations in the database by standard search criteria (name, partial name, age, region, lithology keywords, or any combination), and a map-based graphic user interface with stratigraphic-column navigation. The returned entries can be displayed by-age or in alphabetical order. Each formation is color-coded based on the Geologic Time Scale 2020, and with digitized regional extent in GeoJSON format. These enable plotting of the individual formations or time-slices of all formations across Africa of a user-selected age, with each regional-extent filled with their appropriate lithologic facies pattern, onto any of three proposed plate reconstruction models with a single click. The aim is to make information on Africa geology and its component geologic formations more to accessible to geologists and the general public from the world and for improving paleogeographic maps.  Users can obtain a view of the sediments and volcanics that were accumulating at any time across the ancient land of Africa.These lexicon systems will be interlinked to other stratigraphic and paleogeographic databases through the lUGS Deep-Time Digital Earth platform.