The World Before the Deluge

by Louis Figuier

New Red Sandstone.

In this new phase of the revolutions of the globe, the animated beings on its surface differ much from those which belonged to the Primary epoch. The curious Crustaceans which we have described under the name of Trilobites have disappeared; the molluscous Cephalopods and Brachiopods are here few in number, as are the Ganoid and Placoid Fishes, whose existence also seems to have terminated during this period, and vegetation has undergone analogous changes. The cryptogamic plants, which reached their maximum in the Primary epoch, become now less numerous, while the Conifers experienced a certain extension. Some kinds of terrestrial animals have disappeared, but they are replaced by genera as numerous as new. For the first time the Turtle appears in the bosom of the sea, and on the borders of lakes. The Saurian reptiles acquire a great development; they prepare the way for those enormous Saurians, which appear in the following period, whose skeletons present such vast proportions, and such a strange aspect, as to strike with astonishment all who contemplate their gigantic, and, so to speak, awe-inspiring remains.

The Variegated Sandstone, or Bunter, contains many vegetable, but few animal, remains, although we constantly find imprints of the footsteps of the Labyrinthodon.

The lowest Bunter formation shows itself in France, in the Pyrenees, around the central plateau in the Var, and upon both flanks of the Vosges mountains. It is represented in south-western and central Germany, in Belgium, in Switzerland, in Sardinia, in Spain, in Poland, in the Tyrol, in Bohemia, in Moravia, and in Russia. M. D’Orbigny states, from his own observation, that it covers vast surfaces in the mountainous regions of Bolivia, in South America. It is recognised in the United States, in Columbia, in the Great Antilles, and in Mexico.

The Bunter in France is reduced to the variegated sandstone, except around the Vosges, in the Var, and the Black Forest, where it is accompanied by the Muschelkalk. In Germany it furnishes building-stone of excellent quality; many great edifices, in particular the cathedrals, so much admired on the Rhine—such, for example, as those of Strasbourg and Fribourg—are constructed of this stone, the sombre tints of which singularly relieve the grandeur and majesty of the Gothic architecture. Whole cities in Germany are built of the brownish-red stones drawn from its mottled sandstone quarries. In England, in Scotland, and in Ireland this formation extends from north to south through the whole length of the country. “This old land,” says Professor Ramsay,[54] “consisted in great part of what we now know as Wales, and the adjacent counties of Hereford, Monmouth, and Shropshire; of part of Devon and Cornwall, Cumberland, the Pennine chain, and all the mountainous parts of Scotland. Around old Wales, and part of Cumberland, and probably all round and over great part of Devon and Cornwall, the New Red Sandstone was deposited. Part, at least, of this oldest of the Secondary rocks was formed of the material of the older Palæozoic strata, that had then risen above the surface of the water. The New Red Sandstone series consists in its lower members of beds of red sandstone and conglomerate, more than 1,000 feet thick, and above them are placed red and green marls, chiefly red, which in Germany are called the Keuper strata, and in England the New Red Marl. These formations range from the mouth of the Mersey, round the borders of Wales, to the estuary of the Severn, eastwards into Warwickshire, and thence northwards into Yorkshire and Northumberland, along the eastern border of the Magnesian Limestone. They also form the bottom of the valley of the Eden, and skirt Cumberland on the west; in the centre of England the unequal hardness of its sub-divisions sometimes giving rise to minor escarpments, overlooking plains and undulating grounds of softer strata.”

“Different members of the group rest in England, in some region or other,” says Lyell, “on almost every principal member of the Palæozoic series, on Cambrian, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, and Permian rocks; and there is evidence everywhere of disturbance, contortion, partial upheaval into land, and vast denudations which the older rocks underwent before and during the deposition of the successive strata of the New Red Sandstone group.” (“Elements of Geology,” p. 439.)

The Muschelkalk consists of beds of compact limestone, often greyish, sometimes black, alternating with marl and clay, and commonly containing such numbers of shells that the name of shelly limestone (Muschelkalk) has been given to the formation by the Germans. The beds are sometimes magnesian, especially in the lower strata, which contain deposits of gypsum and rock-salt.

The seas of this sub-period, which is named after the innumerable masses of shells inclosed in the rocks which it represents, included, besides great numbers of Mollusca, Saurian Reptiles of twelve different genera, some Turtles, and six new genera of Fishes clothed with a cuirass. Let us pause at the Mollusca which peopled the Triassic seas.