...Un travel across 300 millions of years !

The territory of the Réserve is a part of the outer alpine domain: the southern subalpine massifs bordering on the Provençal domain.
 
The entire territory is occupied by sedimentary terrainranging in age from the Stephanian to the present. The only major discordances are the absence of any Permian deposits and the late Cretaceous / late Eocene interval.
The Palaeozoic is represented by very small Stephanian outcrops typical of limnetic basins. The Stephanian is of structural interest essentially: it corresponds to the relatively autochthonous formation as a window under the Nappe de Digne.
The detritic Lower Triassic marks the beginning of Tethysian rifting with the great NNE-SSW accidents beginning to structure the entire region. One of the main accidents, the fault of Aix, remains active today (thrust).
The riverine sandstone gave way to Middle and Upper Jurassic evaporitic deposits, then to frankly marine Rhetian deposits.

In the Jurassic and part of the Cretaceous, the basin underwent distension with normal faults guiding sedimentation. To the North, the deposits are essentially of basin type. This sea was teeming with rich fauna, ammonites and marine reptiles (Toarcian and Albian ichthyosaurs, turtles and crocodiles).
To the south there was a vast carbonated platform. At the end of the Jurassic a barrier reef developed on the present location of the Verdon canyon.
The Cretaceous is famous for its stratotypic and other reference sections: Barremian stratotype, Valanginian hypostratotype...
The top of the Cretaceous is not represented and, under the Eocene discordance.
The folding began in the Cretaceous but the Pyrenees-Provençal phase is mainly responsible for the emergence of the region as a whole. 

In the course of the variable alpine phases and up to the present, sedimentary environments have been closely linked to various tectonic events.
This is the context of the fabulous Sirenian site of Taulanne (Priabonian), the Miocene tidal deposits with bird tracks preserved.
Major tectonic distortions continued until the Pliocene-Pleistocene interface with the formation of the great overlapping units.
 
Educational value for academics
The territory of the Réserve is ideal for teaching geology. Several thousand of students from all over Europe have learned field geology near Digne.
In the heart of the southern subalpine massifs, the Réserve concentrates 300 million years of regional geology and many geological disciplines are illustrated here.
Palaeozoic Era (at Barles)
Stephanian outcrops: limnetic facies of the distal alluvial plain, Palaeozoic flora, coal, etc.
Lower Triassic (Barles): riverine channels, onset of Tethysian rifting the discordance.
Middle and Upper Triassic evaporitic deposits: thermomineral springs, salts springs diapirism.
Comparison between basin facies and carbonated platform facies (Verdon)...
Many sections are of great interest for both Jurassic and Cretaceous stratigraphy: Barremian stratotype, Valanginian hypostratotype.

Throughout most of the Mesozoic, there is rich fauna of ammonites as well as highly varied fauna linked to the various types of environment: from the deposits of the reef platform to the relatively deep and poorly oxygenated seafloor.
Associated vertebrate fauna: ichthyosaurs, crocodiles, turtles, fishes, etc.
The Cenozoic and the Alpine mountains
Near Castellane, the Sirenian deposit of Priabonian age has an extremely instructive discordance: transgressive levels fill an ancient karstic relief. Then there are the marine deposits of Miocene molasse characterized by the presence of tidalites and bird tracks.
The panorama of Esclangon is one of the most instructive sites for following the evolution of the various steps whether tectonic or sedimentary.
The entire Tertiary Era is also very rich in terms of palaeontology and palaeoenvironments: sites with fossil Sirenians, micro-mammals, turtles corals, oyster beds, bird tracks...
The great variety of sedimentary environments and their study make it possible not only to identify the environments and the dynamics of the deposits, they also provide information on the Alpine surrection.
The Quaternary is also remarkable: traces of glaciations left by small high-altitude glaciers, erosion of valleys and identification of fluvio-glacial terraces, evolution of torrentiality from the Holocene optimum, geomorphology and hydrogeology with the karst of the Verdon and Artuby valleys, geotechnics (study of the large dams on the Verdon river).