. Parr II Szcr.i,§2.] TRIASSIC. 767 
and dark shales and clays, with bands of light-coloured limestone. One 
“of their most important subdivisions is the so-called Bone-bed—a 
pyritous, micaceous, and occasionally rippled sandstone, sometimes in 
several bands, abounding in fish bones, teeth, coprolites, and other 
organic remains. A similar bone-bed reappears on the same horizon in 
Hanover, Brunswick, and Franconia. ‘The grey marly beds in the lower 
portion of the series have yielded remains of Microlestes antiquus and M. 
Eheticus. Among the reptilian fossils are some precursors of the great 
forms which distinguished the Jurassic period (Ichthyosaurus and 
Plesiosaurus). The fishes include Acrodus minimus, Ceratodus altus (and 
five other species), Hybodus minor, Nemacanthus monilifer, &. Some of 
the lamellibranchs (Fig. 362) are specially characteristic; such are 
Cardium Rheticum, Avicula contorta, Pecten Valoniensis, and Pullastra 
arenicola.} 
Central EHurope.—The Trias is one of the“most compactly dis- 
tributed geological formations of Europe. Its main area extends as a 
great basin from Basel down to the plains of Hanover, traversed 
along its centre by the course of the Rhine, and stretching from the 
flanks of the old high grounds of Saxony and Bohemia on the east 
across the Vosges Mountains into France. This must have been a great 
inland sea, out of which the Harz Mountains, and the high grounds 
of the Hifel, Hundsruck, and Taunus probably rose as islands. To the 
westward of it the Paleozoic area of the north of France and Belgium 
had been raised up into land.?. Along the margin of this land red con- 
glomerates, sandstones, and clays were deposited, which now appear here 
and there reposing wnconformably on the older formations. Traces of 
what were probably other basins occur eastward in the Carpathian 
district, in the west and south-east of France, and over the eastern half 
of the Spanish peninsula. But these areas have been considerably 
obscured, sometimes by dislocation and denudation, sometimes by the 
overlap of more recent formations. In the region between Marseilles 
and Nice Triassic rocks cover a considerable area. They contain feeble 
representatives of the grés bigarré or Bunter beds, and of the marnes 
ivisées or Keuper division, separated by a calcareous zone believed to 
be the equivalent of the Muschelkalk of Germany. Their highest 
platform, the Rhetic or Infra-Lias, contains a shell bed abounding in 
Avicula contorta, and is traceable throughout Provence.® 
In the great German Triassic basin the deposits are as shown in the 
subjoined table : 
; (Rhetic (Infra-Lias).—Grey sandy clays and fine-grained sandstones, contain- 
ing Equisetum, Asplenites, and cycads (Zamites, Pterophyllum), sometimes 
forming thin seams of coal—Cardium Rhxticum, Avicula contorta, Estheria 
minuta, Nothosaurus, Trematosaurus, Belodon, and Microlestes antiquus.‘ 
Rheetic 
1 Strickland, Proc. Geol. Soc. iii. part ii. p. 585. E. B. Tawny, Q. J. Geol. Soe. 
xxii. p. 69; P. B. Brodie, Op. cit. p. 93; F. M. Burton, xxiii. p. 315; C. Moore, xvi. 
p- 483; xxiii. p. 459; xxxvil. pp. 67, 459; W. J. Harrison, xxxii. p. 212; P. M. Duncan, 
xxiii. p. 12; J. W. Davis, xxxvii. p. 414. 
2 This land, according to MM. Cornet and Briart, rose into peaks 16,000 to 20,000 
feet high! . 
3 Hébert, Bull. Soc. Géol. France (2e sér.), xix. p. 100. Dieulafait, Ann. Sez. Géol. 
i. p. 337. 
4 The Avicula contorta zone (see Dr. A. von Dittmar, ‘“ Die Contorta-Zone,” Munich, 
1864) ranges from the Carpathians to the north of Ireland and from Sweden to the hills 
