Abstract: Africa is rich in petroleum resources. It is one of the hotspots for oil-gas exploration in the world and major blocks of China's overseas investment for it. The Atlas orogen in northern Algeria is characterized by complex structures and unclear structural evolution regularity, which becomes the bottleneck for inside hydrocarbon prospecting in its intermountain basin. Based on the theories of modern structural geology and geodynamics, the structural evolution in this area can be divided into three stages such as Triassic-Early Jurassic rift stage, Middle Jurassic -Cretaceous subsidence stage and Cenozoic reverse-uplifting stage. It is pointed out that its dynamic mechanism is that the open of the Mesozoic Neo-Tethys and Atlantic oceans and the dismember of Gondwana land are the dynamic settings for rift and subsidence of Atlas orogen, while the close of the Cenozoic Tethys ocean and the convergence between Africa plate and Eurasian plate are the main reasons for the reverse-uplifting of Atlas orogen.

Key words: Algeria, Atlas orogen, structural evolution, dynamic mechanism