Ecca, noun

/ˈekə/
Origin:
From Ecca Pass, on the road between Grahamstown (now Makhanda) and Fort Beaufort (now KwaMaqoma) (Eastern Cape), named in 1858 by R.N. Rubidge after the Ecca River, a tributary of the Great Fish. ‘The name is of Khoekhoen origin and probably means “salty” or “brackish river”.’ (P.E. Raper, Dict. of S. Afr. Place Names, 1987).
Geology
Usually attributive, especially in the phrases Ecca beds, Ecca flora, Ecca series, etc., designating a geological group made up of shales and sandstones, and the plant fossils found therein.
Note:
The Ecca group is one of several groups which form the lower beds of the Karoo System. See also Dwyka, Karoo System (Karoo sense 3).
1896 R. Wallace Farming Indust. of Cape Col. 55The Lower Karoo beds are of great thickness, very old and distinctly unconformable to the Upper Karoo beds. It has consequently been necessary to distinguish them by different names...The Lower Karoo beds are now familiarly known as the Ecca beds, and include the Dwyka conglomerates already referred to.
1905 H. Bolus in Flint & Gilchrist Science in S. Afr. 224Only on the southern and western margins do the Ecca and Dwyka series make their appearance.
1905 A.W. Rogers in Flint & Gilchrist Science in S. Afr. 243The youngest strata found to have been involved in the Zwartberg folding are the Ecca beds, which lie at high angles along the northern flanks of the northernmost ranges, and which occur on the downthrow (south) side of the Worcester fault in contact with the Malmesbury beds on the northern side.
1905 W. Anderson in Flint & Gilchrist Science in S. Afr. 268It (sc. the Stormberg series) consists of shales and sandstones with occasional coal-seams, containing a fossil flora entirely distinct from the Ecca flora.
1951 Archeology & Nat. Resources of Natal (Natal Regional Survey) I. 36Beds of the Dwyka, Ecca and Beaufort series crop out in normal succession and exercise control over the surface configuration.
1965 Hamilton & Cooke Geology for S. Afr. Students 260Ecca Series, This series follows the Dwyka conformably in Natal and the Cape Province and attains its maximum development of over 6,000 feet near the Cape Folded Belt. It thins out very considerably northwards and in the Transvaal is only some 600 or 700 feet thick.
1971 A.E. Schoch in Std Encycl. of Sn Afr. IV. 192Ecca Series, In the Karoo of South Africa there is a huge basin-shaped occurrence of successive sedimentary rock strata, collectively known as the Karoo System or Karoo Supergroup...Since the successive rocks are stacked upon one another as nearly horizontal strata to fill the basin, it is convenient to divide it into a number of Series or Groups. From the bottom upwards these are respectively named the Dwyka Series, the Ecca Series, the Beaufort Series and the Stormberg Series, each with its own peculiar characteristics. The Ecca Series is composed of successive and alternating beds of shales and sandstones...The coal beds occur especially in the middle portion of the Coal Ecca, also coal, which originated from compressed plant remains.
1984 A. Wannenburgh Natural Wonder of Sn Afr. 11In these drab Ecca sediments the typical fossils are of plants — seed-ferns, which are intermediate between ferns and cycads, and tree-sized varieties of today’s club-mosses — belonging to a distinct type of vegetation that evolved in the southern hemisphere after the Dwyka glaciation.
1994 N. Hiller Informant, Grahamstown (now Makhanda, Eastern Cape)Fossil plants in the Ecca belong to the Glossopteris flora.
Usually attributive, especially in the phrases Ecca beds, Ecca flora, Ecca series, etc.,designating a geological group made up of shales and sandstones, and the plant fossils found therein.
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ECC, nounn.eendjie, nounn.
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