The Paraná Basin stretches from the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso in the north to northern Argentina and Uruguay in the south.

[10] The basin developed during the Paleozoic and the Mesozoic with a sedimentary record comprising rocks from the Ordovician right up to the Cretaceous, thus spanning the time interval between 460 and 66 million years.

The maximum thickness of the infill reaches 7,000 metres (23,000 ft) in its central area and is composed of sedimentary and igneous rocks.

[1][11][14] In the Permian and Triassic the area between Asunción and Río Grande was uplifted in connection to the Gondwanide orogeny effectively splitting the basin in the two.

[15] The piling up of material in Bolivia and the Argentine Northwest during the Andean orogeny caused the Asunción arch, a forebulge, to develop in Paraguay.

[18] These sequences define the stratigraphic framework of the basin and are bound by distinct depositional hiati, caused by erosive events.

[1] The Carboniferous to Early Triassic Gondwana I Supersequence has two distinctive features:[1] Finally, during the Late Permian the Irati Formation was deposited, represented by bituminous shale, a potential petroleum source rock, and famous worldwide for its Mesosaurus fauna.

[23] De Santa Ana, Héctor; Goso Aguilar, César; Montaño, Jorge; Piñeiro, Graciela; Muzio, Rossana; Rossello, Eduardo; Perea, Daniel; Ucha, Nelson (2004).