In the Sinai, the Triassic is preserved with open-ocean carbonate sediments and river sediments, as well as clastic material that spans into the Negev Desert. When the Cimmerian blocks dispersed in the Cretaceous, it caused rifting in the Afro-Arabian Plate area, continuing the expansion of the Palmyra and Levant basins. During the late Cretaceous and the start of the Cenozoic subsidence occurred in the rifted areas and the Levant Basin was part of the Messinian Salinity Crisis which left up to two kilometers of evaporate in the dried out Mediterranean region. The evaporates are now important within Arabia for their role as cap rocks for oil and natural gas deposits, often housed in Oligocene and Miocene deposits. Deposition has continued since the Cretaceous, with periods of tectonic contraction, including one that is still slowly ongoing, resulting in the erosion of the Palmyride fold belt in Syria.
