MEYER ON THE SAURIANS OF THE MUSCHELKALK. 4]. 
is sufficiently fixed, by stating that its oldest member, the bunter 
sandstone, rests on the zechstein, and that its newest, the keuper, is 
covered by the Jura or oolite group. 
In reference to the geographical distribution of the trias forma- 
tions, they are found to form, with slight interruptions, a mass of 
very considerable extent in central Europe. They prevail in Alsace 
and Lorraine, in eastern France, and extend over a great part of 
south-western and north-western Germany ; where cropping out from 
below the jurassic beds in the Swiss Jura, they traverse the whole 
region of Bale, Wiirtemberg and Baden, to the slate mountains on 
the Rhine, and in great part fill the space between these mountains 
and the Harz, the Thuringerwald, and the Voigtland. The trias 
of eastern France is no doubt divided from that of south-western 
Germany by the broad valley of the Rhine, stretching from Bale to 
Mainz or Bingen. A more accurate comparison, however, of these 
two districts shows that they properly form only one whole, on whose 
external border the bunter sandstone appears from below the mus- 
chelkalk, which in its turn dips below the keuper; whilst the mass 
of the latter formation occupying the centre, is traversed nearly in a 
direction from south to north by the broad Rhine valley, whereas 
the Main, almost from its sources in the Fichtelgebirge, intersects in 
deep curves the whole trias formations which it meets in its course 
from the east towards the Rhine. 
The keuper, the most recent of the trias formations, was named by 
Humboldt, ‘grés de Konigstein,’ the Konigstem sandstone, and 
under the name of the quadersandstein, was often confounded, partly 
with the bunter sandstone, partly with tertiary sandstones. This 
formation is also designated the ‘ variegated marls,’ marnes irisées. 
Raumer found that the keuper was separated from the bunter sand- 
stone by the muschelkalk. Where this is not the case, the two 
formations are so mtimately united that they can scarcely be distin- 
guished from each other. In Schwabia and Franconia the keuper 
covers the two older formations, which it also accompanies in other 
laces. 
: The keuper of Wiirtemberg, which is about 1000 feet thick, is 
arranged by Alberti* in three divisions, which are in ascending 
order, carbonaceous slate-clay (Lettenkéhle), keuper gypsum, and 
keuper sandstone. The first division consists of slaty clays passing 
into marls, marl-slates, sandstone, dolomite, limestone and gypsum. 
Init at Gaildorf, where the slate-clays approach to alum-slate, there 
were found considerable remains of the Mastodonsaurus, with plants, 
fishes and shells. The marl-slates also contain reptihan remains with 
plants, fishes and shells; in the sandstone at Sulz remains of rep- 
tiles and fishes were met with, for instance, a beautiful tooth of the so- 
called Liineville reptile ; whilst at Rietheim and Bieberfeld, near Hall, 
a bed was discovered entirely composed of bones and teeth of reptiles, 
remains of fishes and coprolites; and reptiles are also mentioned 
among the petrifactions of the limestone, so that their remains seem 
to pervade the whole division. 
* Monog. des Bunten Sandsteins, etc., p. 111. 
