The Aurus Mountains form a ~50 km long, NW-trending escarpment ridge plus neighbouring inselbergs in the southernmost Namib desert of SW Namibia. Access to this former diamond mining area (the Sperregebiet) was until recently restricted and as a result the Aurus Mountains have never been geologically surveyed apart from research visits to the Roter Kamm impact crater, the details of which are documented in Miller [1]. The spine of the Aurus Mountains follows a major NW-trending shear zone of the Ediacaran-Cambrian Pan African Gariep Orogen which deforms a variety of older Proterozoic basement rocks. This basement inlier, referred to here as the "Sperrgebiet Domain" of the Namaqua Belt, was mapped as part of a collaborative project between the CGS of South Africa and the Geological Survey of Namibia. We present a new stratigraphy and tectonic history for the area based on field mapping and U-Pb zircon geochronology.