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On the Inapplicability of the New Term “Dyas” to the “Permian” Group of Rocks, as Proposed by Dr. Geinitz

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 March 2016

Roderick Impey Murchison
Roderick Impey Murchison*
Affiliation:
Director-General of the Geological Survey of Britain
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Extract

In the year 1859, M. Marcou proposed to substitute the word “Dyas” for “Permian,” and summed up his views by saying that he regarded “the New Red Sandstone, comprising the Dyas and Trias, as a great geologic period, equal in time and space to the Palæozoic epoch or the Grey wacke (Silurian and Devonian), the Carboniferous (Mountain-limestone and Coal), the Mesozoic (Jurassic and Cretaceous), the Tertiary (Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene), and the recent deposits (Quaternary and later)”!!

As that author, who had not been in Russia, criticized the labours and inductions of my associates De Verneuil and Von Keyserling, and myself, in having proposed the word “Permian” for tracts in which he surmised that we had commingled with our Permian deposits much red rock of the age of the Trias, I briefly defended the views I had further sustained by personal examination of the rocks of Permian age in various other countries of Europe.

It was, indeed, evident that M. Marcou's proposed union of the so-called Dyas and Trias in one natural group could not for a moment be maintained, since there is no conclusion on which geologists and palæontologists are more agreed, than that the series composed of Roth-liegende, Kupfer-Schiefer, Zechstein, etc., forms the uppermost Palæozoic group, and is entirely distinct in all its fossils, animal and vegetable, from the overlying Trias, which forms the true base of the Mesozoic or Secondary rocks.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Geologist , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , January 1862 , pp. 4 - 10
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1862

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References

page 4 note * See ‘Dyas et Trias de Marcou,’ Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève, 1859.

page 5 note * See ‘American Journal of Science and Arts,’ 2nd ser. vol. xxviii. p. 256,—the work of M. Marcou having attracted more attention in America than in England.

page 5 note † Leipzig, 1861.

page 5 note ‡ See Leonhard's, ‘Jahrbuch’ of 1842, p. 92 Google Scholar; and the ‘Philosophical Magazine,’ vol. xix. p. 418 Google Scholar, “Sketeh of some of the Principal Results of a Geological Survey of Russia.”

page 6 note * It is true that the term Pénéen was formerly proposed by my eminent friend, M. d'Omalius d'Halloy; but as that name, meaning sterile, was taken from an insulated mass of conglomerate near Malmédy in Belgium, in which nothing organic was ever discovered, it was manifest that it could not be continued in use as applied to a group which was rich in animal and vegetable productions.

page 6 note † Trans. Geol. Soc. London, New Series, vol. iii. p. 37.

page 6 note ‡ I may here note that the great Damuda formation of Bengal, with its fossil Flora and animal remains, including Saurians and Labyrinthodonts, described by Professor Huxley, has recently been referred (at least provisionally) to the Permian age, by Dr. Oldham, the Superintendent of the Geological Survey of India. In fact, Dr. Oldham actually cites the plant Tæniopteris, of the “Permian beds of Geinitz and, Gutbier in Saxony,” in justification of his opinion. See ‘Memoirs of the Geological Survey of India,’ vol. iii. p. 204.

page 6 note § See ‘Siluria,’ 2nd edit., 1859, and ‘Russia in Europe and the Ural Mountains,’ 1845.

page 7 note * On two occasions (1853-4) Professor Morris accompanied me, and traced with me these relations of the strata; subsequently, when Mr. Rupert Jones (1857) was my companion, we saw other sections clearly exhibiting this upward transition which I have described. Since then, Professor Ramsay, when at Eisenach, convinced himself of the accuracy of the fact that the Zechstein passes up conformably into an overlying red cover. My note-books contains many additional evidences, which I have not thought it necessary to repeat.

page 8 note * The red clay or argillaceous shale which covers the limestone is surmounted at Hilton, in Cumberland, by five hundred feet of red sandstone, which, though perfectly conformable to the subjacent Permian rocks, he considers to belong to the Bunter Sandstein of the Trias. Here, then, as in Germany, the limestone may have a red cover, and yet the Bunter Sandstein be intact.

page 9 note * See also ‘Siluria,’ 2nd edit. p. 343.

page 9 note † Phil. Mag. xix. p. 419.

page 9 note ‡ In my last edition of ‘Siluria’ I have spoken of the Permian as the upper-most Palæozoic group, but have not deemed it a system by comparison with the vast deposits of Carboniferous, Devonian, and Silurian age.