The basic structure of the southern French Alps, resembles that of the northern French Alps, in that crystalline massifs (essentially the Mercantour Massif, albeit much smaller than those to the north), line the Italian border, and are succeeded westwards by Pre-Alpine terrain, dominantly of Mesozoic sedimentary rocks. Here there major differences. The Jurassic black marls, given the dry marginally Mediterranean climate, are often dissected into “terres noires” gullied Badlands. The Cretaceous limestones are thinner and less deformed yielding deeply dissected plateaux and canyon landscapes, eg. the Ardeche gorges and the Verdon canyons. Further south there are differences too as the structural trend is more E-W (Pyrennean, rather than Alpine). The Provencal coastal Maures and Esterel massifs are Hercynian granites rather than Alpine metamorphics. To the west is the Rhone delta, the Camargue, and further west still is the lagoonal Languedoc coast.