Following the Panafrican consolidation of the Precambrain basement, marine Early Cambrian with trilobites gradually passes into mainly clastic Cambro-? Ordovician facies. The latter are covered by thin marine Late Permian and early Triassic deposits along the eastern coast of the Dead Sea as well as in northern Negev boreholes. In the southern part of the Arava, Early Palaeozoics are directly overlain by Cretaceous continental facies. In the central Negev Ramon erosional cirque, and in the deep canyons of the Transjordan plateau, large slices of marine Middle-Late Triassic and fluvio-deltaic and marine Early-Middle Jurassic occur. The Triassic-Jurassic boundary is marked by a lateritic horizon. From Lebanon and the Antilebanon (Mt. Hermon) to the Negev makhteshim of Hathira and Hadira, passing by the Malih canyon (Samaria), the Early Cretaceous basal clastics and volcanics truncate edgewise Late and Middle Jurassic horizons. In the southernmost Negev, this unconformity places Late Cretaceous on Precambrian. The Cretaceous marine transgression, Tithonian-Valanginian in the Coastal Plain and Aptian in Galilee, is Cenomanian in the Elat region. Turonian-Early Coniacian platform carbonates reach a wide extent from Lebanon into the Sinai Peninsula. Responding to tectonic activity of alpine phases in the Tauro-Zagrid ranges, folding of the Syrian Arch has affected the Negev and Judea since the Coniacian, controlling Senonian-Paleogene pelagic and neritic sedimentation and the palaeogeography of the region. The huge Oligocene regression is marked by emersion and erosion of most of Israel. Marine Mio-Pliocene of the Coastal Plain interfingers to the East with continental deposits. Since the Miocence, a sinistral strike-slip along the Jordan-Gulf of Aqaba line has taken place. Pliocene neotectonics and isostatic readjustments produced the sinking of the eastern Mediterranean basin and the uplift of the African-Arabian plate, accompanied by the Yezreel-Graben and Jordan-Dead Sea-Arava Rift, generating a new orography. The latter caused the eastern flank of the Negev, Judea and Galilee to become tributaries of the hydrographic pattern of the Rift. A Pliocene marine ingression in the Yezreel Valley is accompanied by brackish and thick evoporitic sediments within the rhombs of the sinistral strike-slip within the Rift. Neogene to Pleistocene basalts extend from the Golan heights to Eastern Galilee, filling large parts of the Rift. The Pleistocene lake of Lisan, including large parts of Jordan and Arava valleys, preceeded the development of the present Dead Sea.