Ch. XXn.] FOSSIL FOOTSTEPS IN NEW RED SANDSTONE. 443 



and among them the bivalve shell called Posidonia minuta, Goldf., 

 before mentioned (fig. 471, p. 439). 



The member of the English " New Red " containing this shell, in 

 those parts of England, is, according to Sir Roderick Murchison and 

 Mr. Strickland, 600 feet thick, and consists chiefly of red marl or slate, 

 with a band of sandstone. Ichthyodorulites, or spines of Hybodus, 

 teeth of fishes, and footprints of reptiles were observed by the same 

 geologists in these strata ; * and the remains of a sanrian, called Rhyn- 

 chosaurus, have been found in this portion of the Trias at Grinsell, near 

 Shrewsbury. 



In Cheshire and Lancashire the gypseous and saliferous red shales 

 and clays of the Trias are between 1000 and 1500 feet thick. In 

 some places lenticular masses of rock-salt are interpolated between 

 the argillaceous beds, the origin of which will be spoken of in the 

 sequel. 



The lower division or English representative of the " Bunter" attains 

 a thickness of 600 feet in the counties last mentioned. Besides red 

 and green" shales and red sandstones, it comprises much soft white 

 quartzose sandstone in which the trunks of silicified trees have been 

 met with at Allesley Hill, near Coventry. Several of them were a foot 

 and a half in diameter, aud some yards in length, decidedly of conifer- 

 ous wood, and showing rings of annual growth.f Impressions, also, 

 of the footsteps of animals have been detected in Lancashire and Che- 

 shire in this formation. Some of the most remarkable occur a few 

 miles from Liverpool, in the whitish quartzose sandstone of Storton 

 Hill, on the west side of the Mersey. They bear a close resem- 

 blance to tracks first observed in a member of the Upper New Red 

 Sandstone, at the village of Hesseberg, near 

 Hildburghausen, in Saxony, to which I have Fig. 433. 



already alluded. For many years these 

 footprints have been referred to a large 

 unknown quadruped, provisionally named 

 Cheirotherium by Professor Kaup, because 

 the marks both of the fore and hind feet 

 resembled impressions made by a human 

 hand. (See fig. 483.) The footmarks at 

 Hesseberg are partly concave, and partly in 

 relief; the former, or the depressions, are 

 seen upon the upper surface of the sand- Sin g le footstep of chMrothe- 

 stone slabs, but those in relief are only upon num. Bunter-sandstein, 

 the lower surfaces, being in fact natural iz™ 1 '^ ~™ Z ' ° Dat 

 casts, formed in the subjacent footprints as 

 in moulds. The larger impressions, which seem to be those of the 



* Geol. Trans., Second Series, vol. v. p. 318, &c. 



I Buckland, Proc. Geol. Soc, vol. ii. p. 439 ; and Murchison and Strickland, 

 Geol. Trans., Second Series, vol. v. p. 347. 



