Glaciations have occurred episodically at different time intervals and for different durations in Earth's history. Ice covers have formed in a wide range of plate tectonic and structural settings but the bulk of Earth's glacial record can be shown to have been deposited and preserved in basins within extensional settings. In such basins, source area uplift and basin subsidence fulfill the tectonic preconditions for the initiation of glaciation and the accomodation and preservation of glaciclastic sediments. Tectonic setting, in particular subsidence rates, also dictates the type of glaciclastic facies and facies successions that are deposited. Many pre-Pleistocene glaciated basins commonly contain well-defined tectonostratigraphic successions recording the interplay of tectonics and sedimentation; traditional climatostratigraphic approaches involving interpretation in terms of either ice advance/retreat cycles or glacio-eustatic sea-level change require revision.

The direct record of continental glaciation in Earth history, in the form of classically-recognised continental glacial landforms and “tillites”, is meagre; it is probable that more than 95% of the volume of preserved “glacial” strata are glacially-influenced marine deposits that record delivery of large amounts of glaciclastic sediment to offshore basins. This flux has been partially or completely reworked by “normal” sedimentary processes such that the record of glaciation and climate change is recorded in marine successions and is difficult to decipher. The dominant “glacial” facies in the rock record are subaqueous debris flow diamictites and turbidites recording the selective preservation of poorly-sorted glaciclastic sediment deposited in deep water basins by sediment gravity flows. However, these facies are also typical of many non-glacial settings, especially volcanically-influenced environments; numerous Archean and Proterozoic diamictites, described in the older literature as tillites, have no clearly established glacial parentage. The same remarks apply to many successions of laminated and thin-bedded facies interpreted as “varvites”.

Despite suggestions of much lower values of solar luminosity (the weak young sun hypothesis), the stratigraphic record of Archean glaciations is not extensive and may be the result of non-preservation. However, the effects of very different Archean global tectonic regimes and much higher geothermal heat flows, combined with a Venus-like atmosphere warmed by elevated levels of CO₂, cannot be ruled out. The oldest unambiguous glacial succession in Earth history appears to be the Early Proterozoic Gowganda Formation of the Huronian Supergroup in Ontario; the age of this event is not well-constrained but glaciation coincided with regional rifting, and may be causally related to, oxygenation of Earth's atmosphere just after 2300 Ma. New evidence that oxygenation is tectonically, not biologically driven, stresses the intimate relationship between plate tectonics, evolution of the atmosphere and glaciation. Global geochemical controls, such as elevated atmospheric CO₂ levels, may be responsible for a long mid-Proterozoic non-glacial interval after 2000 Ma that was terminated by the Late Proterozoic glaciations just after 800 Ma.

A persistent theme in both Late Proterozoic and Phanerozoic glaciations is the adiabatic effect of tectonic uplift, either along collisional margins or as a result of passive margin uplifts in areas of extended crust, as the trigger for glaciation; the process is reinforced by global geochemical feedback, principally the drawdown of atmospheric CO₂ and Milankovitch “astronomical” forcing but these are unlikely, by themselves, to inititiate glaciation. The same remarks …