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The geological history of the region starts with the amalgamation of the supercontinent Pangaea during the Variscan Orogeny and has a continuous record until the Breakup of Pangaea in the Late Triassic. The variscan basement is exposed in the Ruhla Crystalline Complex (RCC) which is part of the Mid German Crystalline Rise and composed of mid to high degree metamorphic rocks. During the Upper Permian the RCC formed a small island in the Zechstein sea surrounded by reefs. These bildups were recognised as fossil reefs in the early 19th century, some decades before LYELL (1841) and Murchinson (1847) recognised fossil reefs in the Silurian of northern Europe. The Thuringian Forest Mountain Basin (TFMB) is an intramontane basin filled with a 4500 m thick sequence of Late Carboniferous and Early Permian terrestrial sediments and volcanic rocks. The sequence is well exposed in the mountainous region and serves as reference section of the Lower Permian in Europe. The TFMB has an extraordinary fossil record and a long research history, dating back more than 300 years ago. It is the birthplace of scientific palaeobotany and plays a special role in the research of Palaeozoic tetrapod fossils and their ichnology. The famed Early Permian Bromacker locality is one of the most significant fossil sites for early terrestrial tetrapods. The combination of a spectacular ichnofossil site with an outstanding site for skeletal remains is unique in the world. The youngest rocks (Triassic to Lower Jurassic) are exposed in the Drei Gleichen area where Cretaceous inversion tectonics has formed a landscape with remarkable morphological features like the colourful badlands. The region has some stratigraphic type localities of European significance and the only outcrop of the Triassic/Jurassic boundary in Central Germany.