36 
DTKNEK 
TKTAS OF TlIK 
TTTMALAYAS. 
h. Correlation with the loiver Trias of Europe, North America and 
Siberia. 
Until the examination of Hayden's and A. v. KrafEt's fossil materials 
from Spiti the evidence for the Lower Triassic age of the Hedenstrcemia 
beds was merely circumstantial. Until then no affinities were known 
between their fauna and that of the Campil or upper Werfen beds- 
of the Mediterranean region. 
Noetling' in his discussion of the age of the Otoceras beds thinks 
that the fauna of the Hedenstrcemia beds might be attributed to the 
lower Muschelkalk or to the Lower Trias with equal reason, and in the 
introduction to his synopsis of the Himalayan Trias - he even em- 
phasizes the assertion that the presence of Lower Trias in the Hima- 
lavas merely rests on pateontological subtilties, without any decisive 
proof. 
Similar opinions have been expressed more or less definitely by 
Other writers. 
Three faunistic elements connecting the Aipine Campil beds and 
the Hedenstrcemia beds, which have been discovered among the Cepha- 
lopoda fr m the latter group, are sufficient to show that those two 
stages may be placed in general parallelism. These three species of 
Cephalopoda are : — 
Tirolites injucundus KraiJt. 
Xenodiscus asiaticus Krafft. 
Meekoceras pseudoplanulatum Krafit. 
Tirolites injucundus is an ammonite of the group of Tirolites 
spinosi, and its discovery in the Himalayas has been so much the more 
astonishing, because the absence of Tirolitinoe was considered by 
E. V. Mojsisovics as one of the most remarkable faunistic characters 
of the Indian zoo-geographical region. 
Xenodiscus asiaticus is distinguished from Paraceratites prior Kittl. 
from the Campil beds of Muc by some very subordinate details only. 
A near affinity of Meekoceras pseudoplanulatum to Meekoceras caprilense 
Mojs. from the Campil beds of the south-eastern Tyrol is also extremely 
probable. 
1 Neuea Jahrh. f. Miner., Beil. Bd., XVIII, p. 561. 
^ Asiatische Trias, Jjdhcea mesozrdca. 1. o., p. 125, 
( 237 ) ■ '« 
