Friedrich August von Alberti (September 4, 1795 – September 12, 1878) was a German geologist whose ground-breaking 1834 publication recognized the unity of the three characteristic strata that compose the sedimentary deposits of the Triassic period in Northern Europe. From the fossils contained in the three distinct layers— of red bed sandstones, capped by chalk (Muschelkalk), followed by black shales— that are found throughout Germany and Northwest Europe, and are called the 'Trias' (Latin trias meaning triad), Alberti detected that they formed a single stratigraphic formation; today it would be termed a system. He identified the Triassic as bearing a unique fossil fauna, bounded by the Permian extinction below and by another extinction above.