STRATIGRAPHICAL GEOLOGY 49! 



The chief error in Stur's sub-division of Trias was his removal 

 of the salt deposits from their association with Lower Trias to 

 a place in the much higher Keuper series. 



Giimbel, in 1873, wrote a paper Das Mendel und Schlern 

 Gebiet, which was published in the reports of the Bavarian 

 Academy of Sciences. Giimbel proved that the Mendola 

 dolomite in its development at the Mendel corresponds, 

 as Richthofen had stated, to the Muschelkalk dolomite 

 with Gyroporella pauciforata in the typical section of the 

 Pufls ravine, but that the higher horizons of the Mendola 

 dolomite at the Mendel correspond with Schlern dolomite. 

 Giimbel contended, therefore, that the name of "Mendola 

 dolomite" was unnecessary. The Buchenstein strata are 

 absent at the Mendel, but at the Schlern and Seis Alpe area 

 they are present and are succeeded by shales (pietra verde) 

 containing Halobia and Posidonomya Wenensis ; above these 

 shales, Giimbel distinguished in ascending order the St. 

 Cassian strata, the Schlern dolomite, the red Raibl marls and 

 thin-bedded series of the Schlern plateau. Giimbel errone- 

 ously compared the " Buchenstein " horizons in South Tyrol 

 with the "Partnach" horizons in North Tyrol, and consigned 

 both to the period of Upper Muschelkalk. In Giimbel's work 

 the Lettenkohlen or Lower Keuper group was said to be 

 represented in South Tyrol by the St. Cassian series, or its 

 dolomitic facies. 



Giimbel strongly insisted that the Schlern dolomite was a 

 stratified marine deposit, originally calcareous, and rich in 

 Gyroporella ; that it had extended over a considerable part of 

 South Tyrol, and was not a coral-reef structure. Giimbel 

 identified the Raibl strata of South -Tyrol with the Upper 

 Cardita strata in South Tyrol, and agreed with Sandberger 

 that they were the Alpine facies of the lower horizons in the 

 extra- Alpine "gypsum Keuper." He still, however, adhered 

 to the independent existence of Lower Cardita strata in North 

 Tyrol as a fossiliferous zone below Wetterstein Limestone in 

 that area. 



In 1874, Von Richthofen published in the Zeitschrift of the 

 German Geological Society a reply to GiimbePs various points 

 of attack on his work in South Tyrol. Richthofen admitted 

 that he had overlooked the identity of the upper part of the 

 Mendola dolomite with Schlern dolomite, but nevertheless 

 held that, as the two horizons of dolomite were palseontologi- 



