Murchisonʹs first sighting of the Permian, at Vyazniki in 1841

Roderick Impey Murchison named the Permian Period in 1841 based on his work on Lower Permian marine sediments around the city of Perm’, on the west flank of the Ural Mountains. However, he had observed post-Carboniferous red beds earlier, around the town of Vyazniki, west of Moscow, lying above the classic Carboniferous limestones of the Moscow Basin. Murchisonʹs notebooks and papers show that he and colleagues equivocated about the exact age of these red beds, whether latest Permian or early Triassic, but he always favoured the former view. So, his initial observation of the Vyazniki redbeds provided a marker for the top of the Permian and base of the Triassic in the European Russian platform.