Early work

The history of the identification and acceptance of the Permian Period by geologists is in many ways the account of good deductive reasoning, a determined scientist, and an opportunity that was exploited to its fullest. Scottish geologist Roderick I. Murchison had been aware that the Coal Measures (unit of stratigraphy equal to the Pennsylvanian Series or Upper Carboniferous System) in northern England and Germany were overlain by red beds and poorly fossilized dolomitic limestones that had major unconformities at their base and top. Murchison reasoned that somewhere, perhaps outside northwestern Europe, a more complete stratigraphic succession would fill in these sedimentary gaps and would provide a more complete, better-preserved fossil assemblage.

In 1840 and 1841 Murchison found the missing stratigraphic succession in European Russia along the western flanks of the Ural Mountains, where he recognized a well-developed succession of rocks that both included rocks equivalent in age to the problematic red beds and dolomitic limestones of northwestern Europe and also filled the missing gaps below and above those sediments. He named these rocks the Permian System after the region of Perm, where they are particularly well developed.

Murchison included the red beds and evaporite beds now referred to as the Kungurian Stage in the lower part of his Permian System, while incorporating the nonmarine beds of the Tatarian Stage (a regional stage roughly equivalent to the Capitanian Stage plus a portion of the Wordian Stage) in its upper part. The upper portion of these nonmarine beds was subsequently shown to be Early Triassic in origin. The Ufimian-Kazanian Stage (a regional stage overlapping the current Roadian Stage and the remainder of the Wordian Stage) in between Murchison’s upper and lower parts of the Permian System was considered to be a close lithologic and age equivalent of the Zechstein of northwestern Europe.

Later work

A symposium organized by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists in 1939 established North American standard reference sections for the Permian consisting of four series—namely, the Wolfcampian, Leonardian, Guadalupian, and Ochoan—on the basis of the succession in West Texas and New Mexico.

Attempts in the 1950s and ′60s to unify the nomenclature within the Permian System into two (upper and lower) series based primarily on the Russian Platform and Ural successions proved unsuccessful. Currently the Permian System is subdivided into three series with global reference sections based on the Russian Cisuralian succession for the Lower Series, the West Texas Guadalupian for the Middle Series, and the Chinese Lopingian for the Upper Series.

Regional stages were considered necessary and important because they were based on strongly provincial faunal zonations that differ markedly from one region to the next. Within a single region or faunal province, the similarity of the succession of fossils and patterns of rock deposition permits ready age correlations; however, age correlations from one region to the next are more difficult and open to more questions. This differentiation of provincial faunas and their isolation from one another increase noticeably in the middle and later parts of the Permian Period.

Permian-Triassic boundary

Except for the central and eastern parts of the Tethys region, where local deposition was apparently continuous, the boundary between the Permian System and the overlying Triassic System is a hiatus of one to several million years. Outside of the Tethys region, the boundary between these two important systems—indeed, the boundary between the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras—has not been readily defined. The latest Permian faunas were reduced to only a few remnant genera that were sensitive to stressful new environments. Typical Triassic lineages were mostly relicts from the latest Permian.