Abstract The Grand Coyer area provides a well-exposed remnant of the Grès d’Annot deep-water sandstones, which were deposited in the southern Alpine foreland basin during the Eocene and Oligocene. The Grès d’Annot has been extensively studied by many researchers; it provides an important analog for the stratigraphic and depositional architecture of deep-water elastics deposited in confined and ponded basins (for a full summary of recent work, see Joseph and Lomas, 2004 ). The Grès d’Annot is preserved in a series of largely synclinal outliers in the Alps of southeast France and parts of Italy. During deposition, sediment was delivered from the southeast, draining the Maures-Esterel and Corsica-Sardinia massifs. Linked depocen-ters and troughs developed on top of early Alpine thrust systems of the southern sub-Alpine chains. The Grand Coyer basin remnant ( Figure 1 ) is a significant set of outcrops that allow us to link the paleogeography from the more proximal Annot town remnant in the south to the downdip basin remnants in the north. The north face of Grand Coyer exposes an extensive outcrop of the Grès d’Annot with a variety of depositional facies and stratigraphic architectures ( Figures 2 – 11 ). The lower part of the exposed section comprises amalgamated sheet sandstones and conglomerates, interpreted to have been deposited in a highly confined basin setting. These are overlain by a distinctive interval comprising shale-rich intervals and sandstone packages with erosive bases interpreted as channel fills ( Figures 5 – 10 ). The shale-rich intervals are characterized by