Kalahari Craton 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 Craton to the south and the smaller Zimbabwe Craton to the north. The Namaqua Belt is the southern margin of the Kaapvaal Craton. Parts of the Kalahari Craton are now located in East (the Grunehogna Craton) and West Antarctica (Haag Nunataks) and the Falkland Islands. The name was first introduced by . Following a terminology introduced in 2008, the
Kalahari Desert may be in part the residues of ancient lakes; the Kalahari Desert was once a much wetter place. The ancient Lake Makgadikgadi dominated the area, covering the Makgadikgadi Pan and surrounding areas, but it drained or dried out some 10,000 years ago. It may have once covered as much as . The Kalahari has had a complex climatic history over the past million or so years, in line with major global changes. Changes in the last 250,000 years have been reconstructed from various data sources, and provide evidence of both former extensive lakes and periods drier than now. During the