The Palatine-Saarland Muschelkalk Region () - or more accurately the Palatine-Saarland-Lorraine Muschelkalk Region (''Pfälzisch-Saarländisch-Lothringisches Muschelkalkgebiet'') - is a natural region of the third order in southwestern

Rhineland-Palatinate Rhineland-Palatinate ( , ; ; ; ) is a western state of Germany. It covers and has about 4.05 million residents. It is the ninth largest and sixth most populous of the sixteen states. Mainz is the capital and largest city. Other cities are ...

and southern

Saarland Saarland (, ; ) is a state of Germany in the southwest of the country. With an area of and population of 990,509 in 2018, it is the smallest German state in area apart from the city-states of Berlin, Bremen, and Hamburg, and the smallest in ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

, and, on the French side of the border, in northern

Lorraine Lorraine, also , ; ; Lorrain: ''Louréne''; Lorraine Franconian: ''Lottringe''; ; ; is a cultural and historical region in Eastern France, now located in the administrative region of Grand Est. Its name stems from the medieval kingdom of ...

and

Alsace bossue The Alsace bossue ( Alemannic and Frankish: ''S'Gromme/S'Krumme Elsass'', German: ''das krumme Elsass/ Krummes Elsass''), is a territory of Bas-Rhin in Alsace, which includes the three former cantons of Sarre-Union, Drulingen and La Petite-Pierr ...

. Its name is derived from the

Handbook of the Natural Region Divisions of Germany The ''Handbook of Natural Region Divisions of Germany'' () was a book series resulting from a project by the former German Federal Institute for Regional Studies ('' Bundesanstalt für Landeskunde'') to determine the division of Germany into natu ...

, where it bears the index number 18. Within the North French Scarplands it represents the

Muschelkalk The Muschelkalk (German for "shell-bearing limestone"; ) is a sequence of sedimentary rock, sedimentary rock strata (a lithostratigraphy, lithostratigraphic unit) in the geology of central and western Europe. It has a Middle Triassic (240 to 230 m ...

stage, but also transitions locally into

bunter sandstone The Buntsandstein (German for ''coloured'' or ''colourful sandstone'') or Bunter sandstone is a lithostratigraphic and allostratigraphic unit (a sequence of rock strata) in the subsurface of large parts of west and central Europe. The Buntsands ...

. Its core area is divided into the

Zweibrücken Westrich The Westrich Plateau (),Helmut Beeger et al.: "Die Landschaften von Rheinhessen-Pfalz − Benennung und räumliche Abgrenzung". In: ''Berichte zur deutschen Landeskunde'', Vol. 63, Part 2, Trier, 1989, pp. 327–359 also Zweibrücken Westrich ('' ...

(Upper Bunter Sandstone overlain by Lower Muschelkalk) in the east and the Saar-Blies-Gau with the

Bliesgau The Bliesgau is a region in the state of Saarland in the south-west of Germany and borders with France. It is named after the River Blies, which is a tributary to the Saar. Blieskastel is the principal town of the district. Other towns in the area ...

(Upper Muschelkalk) in the southeast. To the northwest lies the Merzig Muschelkalk Plateau near (Unterem)

Saargau The Saargau was a Franks, Frankish Gau (country subdivision), Gau county (''Gaugrafschaft''). Today the name is given to the ridge between the rivers Saar (river), Saar and Moselle in Germany and, in the south, the region between the Saar and the Fr ...

, which is separated however from the heartland by the Lorraine Keuper Lowland (

Keuper The Keuper is a lithostratigraphic unit (a sequence of rock strata) in the subsurface of large parts of west and central Europe. The Keuper consists of dolomite, shales or claystones and evaporites that were deposited during the Middle and Lat ...

), the

Warndt The Warndt () is an extensive forest area of approximately including parts of the German Saarland and the French region Grand Est west of Saarbrücken. The geology of the Warndt is composed of Buntsandstein permeated by veins of iron ore and dep ...

(

Bunter sandstone The Buntsandstein (German for ''coloured'' or ''colourful sandstone'') or Bunter sandstone is a lithostratigraphic and allostratigraphic unit (a sequence of rock strata) in the subsurface of large parts of west and central Europe. The Buntsands ...

Carboniferous The Carboniferous ( ) is a Geologic time scale, geologic period and System (stratigraphy), system of the Paleozoic era (geology), era that spans 60 million years, from the end of the Devonian Period Ma (million years ago) to the beginning of the ...

) and the Saarkohlenwald (Carboniferous). Since 1969 this has been reckoned by the ''Institut für Landeskunde'' as part of the major region of the Gutland (major unit group 26),Division into major regions since 1969
as it was published until its dissolution by the ''Bundesanstalt'' in the early 1990s. but on the Saarbrücken map (1972) from the same house and also in the internal Saarland classification by Quasten (1992) it is numerically part of group 18.

References

{{coord, 49.1430, N, 7.3630, E, source:wikidata, display=title South German Scarplands