The accompanying table will explain the subdivisions generally adopted for the uppermost of the two systems above alluded to, and the names given to them in England and on the Continent.
| Synonyms. | |||||||||||||
| German. | French. | ||||||||||||
| Trias or Upper New Red Sandstone | a. Saliferous and gypseous shales and sandstone | Keuper | Marnes irisées. | ||||||||||
| b. (wanting in England) | Muschelkalk | Muschelkalk, ou calcaire coquillier. | |||||||||||
| c. Sandstone and quartzose conglomerate | Bunter-sandstein | Grès bigarré. | |||||||||||
I shall first describe this group as it occurs in South Western and North Western Germany, for it is far more fully developed there than in England or France. It has been called the Trias by German writers, or the Triple Group, because it is separable into three distinct formations, called the "Keuper," the "Muschelkalk," and the "Bunter-sandstein."
Fig. 319.
Equisetites columnaris. (Syn. Equisetum columnare.) Fragment of stem, and small portion of same magnified. Keuper.
The Keuper, the first or newest of these, is 1000 feet thick in Würtemberg, and is divided by Alberti into sandstone, gypsum, and carbonaceous slate-clay.[287-A] Remains of Reptiles, called Nothosaurus and Phytosaurus, have been found in it with Labyrinthodon; the detached teeth, also, of placoid fish and of rays, and of the genera Saurichthys and Gyrolepis ([figs. 325], [326], [p. 289.]). The plants of the Keuper are generically very analogous to those of the lias and oolite, consisting of ferns, equisetaceous plants, cycads, and conifers, with a few doubtful monocotyledons. A few species, such as Equisetites columnaris, are common to this group, and the oolite.
The Muschelkalk consists chiefly of a compact, greyish limestone, but includes beds of dolomite in many places, together with gypsum and rock-salt. This limestone, a rock wholly unrepresented in England, abounds in fossil shells, as the name implies. Among the cephalopoda there are no belemnites, and no ammonites with foliated sutures, as in the incumbent lias and oolite, but a genus allied to the Ammonite, called Ceratite by De Haan, in which the descending lobes (see a, b, c, [fig. 320.]) terminate in a few small denticulations pointing inwards. Among the bivalve shells, the Posidonia minuta, Goldf. (Posidonomya minuta, Bronn) (see [fig. 321.]), is abundant, ranging through the Keuper, Muschelkalk, and Bunter-sandstein; and Avicula socialis, [fig. 322.], having a similar range, is very characteristic of the Muschelkalk in Germany, France, and Poland.