The Kaigas glaciation was a hypothesized

snowball earth The Snowball Earth hypothesis proposes that, during one or more of Earth's Greenhouse and icehouse Earth, icehouse Climate, climates, the Earth's surface, planet's surface became entirely or nearly entirely Freezing, frozen. It is believed that ...

event in the

Neoproterozoic The Neoproterozoic Era is the unit of geologic time from 1 billion to 538.8 million years ago. It is the last era of the Precambrian Supereon and the Proterozoic Eon; it is subdivided into the Tonian, Cryogenian, and Ediacaran periods. It is ...

Era, preceding the

Sturtian glaciation The Sturtian glaciation was a Snowball Earth glaciation, or perhaps multiple glaciations, during the Cryogenian Period when the Earth experienced repeated large-scale glaciations. The duration of the Sturtian glaciation has been variously defined, ...

. Its occurrence was inferred based on the interpretation of Kaigas Formation conglomerates in the stratigraphy overlying the

Kalahari Craton The Kalahari Craton is a craton, an old and stable part of the continental lithosphere, that occupies large portions of South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe. It consists of two cratons separated by the Limpopo Belt: the larger Kaapvaal Cra ...

as correlative with pre-Sturtian Numees formation glacial diamictites. However, the Kaigas formation was later determined to be non-glacial, and a Sturtian age was assigned to the Numees diamictites. Thus, there is no longer any evidence for a Neoproterozoic glaciation prior to the Sturtian snowball earth event.

References

Ice ages Cryogenian Glaciology {{glaciology-stub