This work deals with the general features of the Jurassic in the Norandean Realm (Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela); more details about its characteristics are given forthe northern portion ofthe Upper Magdalena Valley selected area for the excursion prepared with ocassion of the IV Field Conference of the IGCP-UNESCO Project 322 Correlation of Jurassic Events in South America, October 29-November 4, 1995, in Bogota. The Jurassic in this part of South America consists mainly of terrestrial and volcanogenic units that include different types of pyroclastics, effusives and thick intervals of red beds, as well as restricted marine deposits. Typical fossil scarcity, generalized incomplete stratigraphic sequences, difficult outcrop conditions and absence of detailed works have permited to visualize only adiffuse scenario, which paleogeographically and paleotectonically can be interpreted as been the result of rifting processes, compression/subduction with main volcanic areas and associated back-arc basins, or oblique translation of exotic suspected terrains. However, the state of knowledge supports more the first postulate invocating a supposed separation of North and South America leading to the opening of the protocaribbean and of distensional supracrustal depressions, that permited the accumulation of aulacogen similar succesions including short time sea ingressions, like those registered in the Payande, Bata, Morrocoyal and Jipi, Caju and Cuisa Formations. Recentfindings of palinomorph bearing metacherts and metaturbidites (as green schists) indicating Early Jurassic age and outcropping in the SW extreme of the Cordillera Real of Ecuador, as well as xenoliths containing late triassic bivalves in the Zamora Batholith of the same cordillera, confirm the existence there of a deep paleopacific ocean, a fact of great relevance for the evaluation of the several paleogeographic models proposed by precedent authors and makes possible the presence of corresponding rocks on the western flank of the Colombian Central Cordillera.