Muschelkalk.—The next member of the Trias in Germany, the _Muschelkalk,_ which underlies the _Keuper_ before described, consists chiefly of a compact greyish limestone, but includes beds of dolomite in many places, together with gypsum and rock-salt. This limestone, a formation 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 Lias, and Oolite, and the Hallstadt beds; but we find instead a genus allied to the Ammonite, called _Ceratites_ by de Haan, in which the descending lobes (Fig. 402) terminate in a few small denticulations pointing inward. Among the bivalve crustacea, the _Estheria minuta,_ Bronn (see Fig. 390), is abundant, ranging through the Keuper, Muschelkalk, and Bunter-sandstein; and _Gervillia socialis_ (Fig. 403), having a similar range, is found in great numbers in the Muschelkalk of Germany, France, and Poland. Fig. 402: Ceratites nodosus. Fig. 403: Gervillia (Avicula) socialis. Fig. 404: Enerinus liliiformis. Fig. 405: Aspidura loricata. The abundance of the heads and stems of lily encrinites, _ Encrinus liliiformis_ (Fig. 404), (or _Encrinites moniliformis_), shows the slow manner in which some beds of this limestone have been formed in clear sea-water. The star-fish called _Aspidura loricata_ (Fig. 405) is as yet peculiar to the Muschelkalk. In the same formation are found the skull and teeth of a reptile of the genus _Placodus_ (see Fig. 406), which was referred originally by Munster, and afterwards by Agassiz, to the class of fishes. But more perfect specimens enabled Professor Owen, in 1858, to show that this fossil animal was a Saurian reptile, which probably fed on shell-bearing mollusks, and used its short and flat teeth, so thickly coated with enamel, for pounding and crushing the shells. Fig. 406: Palatal teeth of Placodus gigas. Fig. 407: Voltzia heterophylla. Bunter-sandstein.—The _Bunter-sandstein_ consists of various-coloured sandstones, dolomites, and red clays, with some beds, especially in the Hartz, of calcareous pisolite or roe-stone, the whole sometimes attaining a thickness of more than 1000 feet. The sandstone of the Vosges is proved, by its fossils, to belong to this lowest member of the Triassic group. At Sulzbad (or Soultz-les-bains), near Strasburg, on the flanks of the Vosges, many plants have been obtained from the “bunter,” especially conifers of the extinct genus _Voltzia,_ of which the fructification has been preserved. (See Fig. 407.) Out of thirty species of ferns, cycads, conifers, and other plants, enumerated by M. Ad. Brongniart, in 1849, as coming from the “Grès bigarré,” or Bunter, not one is common to the Keuper.