British Triassic fossil reptile sites

Abstract

The British Triassic deposits have a broad Ushaped outcrop in the English Midlands, with a continuation south-westwards to south Wales and Devon (Figure 4.1). Smaller outcrops occur in northwest England, in Northern Ireland and in Scotland (Warrington et al., 1980, figs 2 and 3). The sediments are almost wholly continental ter restrial red-beds deposited in fault-bounded basins in southern and western Britain and on the more regionally subsiding Eastern England Shelf, which formed the onshore marginal part of the Southern North Sea Basin (Audley-Charles, 1970; Holloway, 1985). In the Late Permian and Early Triassic, renewed and extensional subsidence in the Wessex Basin, Worcester Graben and the Needwood and Cheshire basins, resulted in the establishment of an axial drainage system which flowed northwards from the Variscan Highlands (Holloway, 1985).