The Sergipe-Alagoas Basin is a continental margin basin in the Sergipe and Alagoas states of northeastern Brazil, about 20 to 50 kilometres wide onshore, but with its widest extension offshore,[1] more precisely 13,000 km2 onshore and 40,000 km2 offshore.

The results of this expedition were published in the book “Geology and Physical Geography of Brazil” from 1870, where it was described fossils of ammonites and a gastropod from the municipalities of Maruim and Larangeiras.

With the Commissão Geológica do Império do Brazil, an expedition from 1875 and 1878 directed by Hartt, important studies were carried by the American palaeontologist Charles A.

John Casper Branner published in 1890 a report on the Sergipe-Alagoas Basin about the localities of White's materials.

Research of the Basin received strong motivation when search for petroleum begun in the 1940s, resulting in detailed maps and new fossil collections.

Biostratigraphic studies by Karl Beurlen established a zonation of the Aptian-Albian Riachuelo Formation based on ammonites.

[1] The geological evolution of the basin represents 5 tectonic stages: syneclise, pre-rift, rift, transitional and drift.

[1] 1) Syneclise stage - Late Carboniferous to Early Permian - It is represented by the Batinga Formation, which probably was of glacial origin, which comprises siliciclastic rocks, and the Aracaré Formation, comprising eolian sandstones, shales and lacustrine algal laminites.

The formation was named after he village of Batinga in the northwestern part of the Sergipe Sub-basin.

Composed by mature coarse-grained sandstones with large cross-stratification sets, associated with silicified oolitic-oncolitic calcarenites, algal mats and stromatolites.

The original surroundings where suggested to have been a warm and dry desertic environment and shore bordering a large lake.

Composed of fine to medium-grained sandstones, possibly formed in a braided fluvial system.

Large conifer trunks of the species Agathoxylon benderi where found in the formation's sandstones.

Its fossil record consists of gastropods, bivalve molluscs, remains of Lepidotes fish, crocodylomorph teeth and the oldest occurrences of Spinosauridae in South America.

It is composed by succession of shales and fine-grained sandstones that interfingers laterally with the Penedo Formation.

Composed of coarse to medium-grained sandstones deposited in a fluvial-deltaic environment subject to eolian reworking.

Its name derives from the town of Penedo on the Rio São Francisco in Alagoas.

Consists of fine to coarse- grained sandstones and mudstones deposited in a fluvio- deltaic-lacustrine environment.

It consists of characteristic grey to green shales formed during a widespread transgression in the area.

The Carmópolis Member is formed by sandstones with minor intercalations of siltstones and shales and polymictic conglomerates.

Fossils found in the formation include foraminifers, palynomorphs, ostracods, conchostraceans and fish remains.

[1] The Sergipe-Alagoas Basin is covered by wide areas of rock coming from this unit.

It is named after the character of these sediments in parts of the coast where they form coastal cliffs, "barreiras" in Portuguese.