The American
Trias is chiefly remarkable for having yielded the remains of a
small Marsupial (_Dromatherium_), and numerous footprints, which
have generally been referred to Birds (_Brontozoum_), along with
the tracks of undoubted Reptiles (_Otozoum, Anisopus_, &c.)
The subjoined section (fig. 139) expresses, in a diagrammatic
manner, the general sequence of the Triassic rocks when fully
developed, as, for example, in the Bavarian Alps:--
[Illustration: Fig. 139. GENERALIZED SECTION OF THE TRIASSIC ROCKS
OF CENTRAL EUROPE.]
With regard to the _life_ of the Triassic period, we have to
notice a difference as concerns the different members of the group
similar to that which has been already mentioned in connection
with the Permian formation. The arenaceous deposits of the series,
namely, resemble those of the Permian, not only in being commonly
red or variegated in their colour, but also in their conspicuous
paucity of organic remains. They for the most part are either
wholly unfossiliferous, or they contain the remains of plants or
the bones of reptiles, such as may easily have been drifted from
some neighbouring shore. The few fossils which may be considered
as properly belonging to these deposits are chiefly Crustaceans
(_Estheria_) or Fishes, which may well have lived in the waters
of estuaries or vast inland seas.
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