The Weissliegend is a European sandstone unit of largely late Early Permian age. It is underlain by the Early Permian Rotliegend red desert sandstones and is overlain by the conventionally accepted basal bed of the Zechstein-the bituminous marine shales of the Kupferschiefer. The Weissliegend sandstones are characteristically white or grey in colour and have been recognised beneath the North Sea, in Germany and in Poland. Equivalents, which are red or yellow in colour, occur in NE England and at the southern edge of the Moray Firth Basin in Scotland. From an examination of cliff and quarry exposures in Britain, and of drill cores from southern North Sea gas wells, it is now believed that the bulk of the Weissliegend sandstones (and their equivalents) were originally deposited as aeolian dunes. These dune sands, however, were later modified by a widespread event, the Zechstein transgression, which caused their partial homogenisation, the creation of large-scale soft-sediment deformation structures, and the local and minor reworking of some of the dune flanks. The preferred mechanism of deformation is interpreted as: (1) entrapment of large pockets of air within the bodies of the dunes by flanking and overlying wetted dune sands; (2) venting of the air pockets when the rising internal air pressures overcame the weight of the hydrostatic head of water and the capillary (cohesive) strength of the overlying wetted sands; (3) the rapid replacement of air by water, which caused liquidisation of the original dune laminae; and (4) the associated collapse and final consolidation of the sands into a tigher packing configuration. Deformations seem to be more developed in former transverse dunes than in seif dunes. The reason may be that the relatively tightly packed low-angle accretion bedding common on the flanks of seif dunes is more resistant to deformation than the looser avalanche sands that form a major part of transverse dunes. Limited reworking of former dune sands was probably best developed on the steep lee slopes of transverse dunes and the steeper upper slopes of seif dunes. The lack of reddening of the Weissliegend sandstones-proper is attributed to a combination of their accumulation above the Rotliegend water table, to the rapidity of the Zechstein transgression, and to the anoxic state of the early Zechstein sea floor. The Weissliegend sands, unlike the underlying Rotliegend into which they grade, were thus never in a diagenetic environment that was conducive to reddening. Finally, it is recommended that the term Weissliegend be dropped in any formational sense. It should only be retained for the Weissliegend proper, and their equivalents, to denote a complex facies association dominated by (1) the uppermost Early Permian Rotliegend dune sands (now partly deformed) that lay above the water table just prior to the Zechstein transgression, together with (2) the minor erosional marine products caused by that transgression. The latter, sensu stricto, are Zechstein sandstones of earliest Late Permian age.