Sequences of interbedded adhesion-ripple sands and barchan-dune sands, now forming in the coastal Namib Desert just south of Walvis Bay, also occur in a wide belt of Permian Rotliegend desert deposits in the south-central part of the North Sea Basin of NW Europe. In the Namib Desert, the adhesion-ripple sands accumulate on a wide supratidal flat, laterally transitional to a barchan-dune field. A concentrated sea-water-derived brine (4,7 to 5,2 times denser than sea-water) occurs 30 to 50 em below the surface. In the vadose zone, precipitation of aragonite, high-magnesian calcite, gypsum and bassanite and dolomitisation occurs; mainly halite crystallises at the surface. The surface cementation with halite plays an important role in the formation of the adhesion-ripple sands and in the preservation of foresetted beds of sand originally deposited as the basal parts of barchan dunes. On the basis of a close similarity in sedimentary structure and the type of early diagenesis, it is concluded that the dominating environmental factors of the investigated Namib and Rotliegend deposits (wide, low-lying plains having near-surface groundwater tables, and a desert climate) are the same. Keywords: Namibia, Kuiseb River, dune formation, ecology, geomorphology, desert deposits, barchan dunes.