The Serpukhovian is in the
ICS geologic timescale
The geologic time scale, or geological time scale, (GTS) is a representation of time based on the rock record of Earth. It is a system of chronological dating that uses chronostratigraphy (the process of relating strata to time) and geochr ...
the uppermost
stage
Stage or stages may refer to:
Acting
* Stage (theatre), a space for the performance of theatrical productions
* Theatre, a branch of the performing arts, often referred to as "the stage"
* ''The Stage'', a weekly British theatre newspaper
* Sta ...
or youngest
age of the
Mississippian, the lower
subsystem
A system is a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. A system, surrounded and influenced by its environment, is described by its boundaries, structure and purpose and expresse ...
of the
Carboniferous. The Serpukhovian age lasted from Ma to
Ma. It is preceded by the
Visean and is followed by the
Bashkirian. The Serpukhovian correlates with the lower part of the
Namurian
The Namurian is a stage in the regional stratigraphy of northwest Europe with an age between roughly 326 and 313 Ma (million years ago). It is a subdivision of the Carboniferous system or period and the regional Silesian series. The Namurian ...
Stage of European stratigraphy and the middle and upper parts of the
Chesterian
The Mississippian ( , also known as Lower Carboniferous or Early Carboniferous) is a subperiod in the geologic timescale or a subsystem of the geologic record. It is the earlier of two subperiods of the Carboniferous period lasting from roughly ...
Stage of North American stratigraphy.
Name and definition
The Serpukhovian Stage was proposed in 1890 by Russian stratigrapher
Sergei Nikitin and was introduced in the official stratigraphy of European Russia in 1974. It was named after the city of
Serpukhov, near
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...
. The ICS later used the upper Russian subdivisions of the Carboniferous in its international geologic time scale.
The base of the Serpukhovian is informally defined by the first appearance of the
conodont ''
Lochriea ziegleri'', though the utility and systematic stability of this species is not yet certain. No lower
GSSP
A Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) is an internationally agreed upon reference point on a stratigraphic section which defines the lower boundary of a stage on the geologic time scale. The effort to define GSSPs is conducted ...
has been assigned to the Serpukhovian Stage yet. Two candidate GSSPs have been proposed: the Verkhnyaya Kardailovka section in the South
Urals
The Ural Mountains ( ; rus, Ура́льские го́ры, r=Uralskiye gory, p=ʊˈralʲskʲɪjə ˈɡorɨ; ba, Урал тауҙары) or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western ...
of
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...
, and the Naqing (Nashui) section in
Guizhou
Guizhou (; formerly Kweichow) is a landlocked province in the southwest region of the People's Republic of China. Its capital and largest city is Guiyang, in the center of the province. Guizhou borders the autonomous region of Guangxi to the ...
,
China.
The top of the stage (the base of the
Pennsylvanian subsystem and Bashkirian stage) is at the first appearance of the conodont ''
Declinognathodus nodiliferus'' in the lower
Bird Spring Formation, which overlies the
Battleship Formation in Nevada. It is also slightly above the first appearance of the
foram
Foraminifera (; Latin for "hole bearers"; informally called "forams") are single-celled organisms, members of a phylum or class of amoeboid protists characterized by streaming granular ectoplasm for catching food and other uses; and commonly a ...
''
Globivalvulina bulloides'', genozone of the
ammonoid genus
Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...
''
Homoceras'' and the ammonoid
biozone
In biostratigraphy, biostratigraphic units or biozones are intervals of geological strata that are defined on the basis of their characteristic fossil taxa, as opposed to a lithostratigraphic unit which is defined by the lithological properties ...
of ''
Isohomoceras subglobosum''.
Subdivision
Biostratigraphy
In Europe, the Serpukhovian Stage includes three conodont biozones: the ''
Gnathodus
''Gnathodus'' is an extinct conodont genus in the family Idiognathodontidae.
Use in stratigraphy
The Tournaisian, the oldest age of the Mississippian (also known as Lower Carboniferous), contains eight conodont biozones, 3 of which are defi ...
postbilineatus'' Zone (youngest), ''Gnathodus bollandensis'' Zone, and ''Lochriea ziegleri'' Zone (in part, oldest).
There are three
foraminifera
Foraminifera (; Latin for "hole bearers"; informally called "forams") are single-celled organisms, members of a phylum or class of amoeboid protists characterized by streaming granular ectoplasm for catching food and other uses; and commonly ...
biozones: the ''
Monotaxinoides transitorius'' Zone (youngest), ''
Eostaffellina protvae'' Zone, and ''
Neoarchaediscus postrugosus'' Zone (oldest).
In North America, the stage encompassed four conodont biozones: the ''
Rhachistognathus muricatus'' Zone (youngest), ''
Adetognathus unicornis'' Zone, ''
Cavusgnathus
''Cavusgnathus'' is an extinct genus of conodonts.
Glen K. Merrill stated in 1963 that "conodont workers have considered ''Idiognathoides'' to be a junior synonym of ''Polygnathodella
''Polygnathodella'' is an extinct genus of conodont.
...
naviculus'' Zone, and ''Gnathodus bilineatus'' Zone (in part, oldest).
Regional subdivisions
In the regional stratigraphy of Russia (and Eastern Europe as a whole), the Serpukhovian is subdivided into four substages, from oldest to youngest: the Tarusian, Steshevian, Protvian, and Zapaltyubian. The former three are found in the
Moscow Basin and are named after places near Serpukhov (
Tarusa
Tarusa (russian: Тару́са), also known as Tarussa (), is a town and the administrative center of Tarussky District in Kaluga Oblast, Russia, located on the left bank of the Oka River, northeast of Kaluga, the administrative center of th ...
and
Protva
The Protva () is a river in Moscow and Kaluga Oblasts in Russia, left tributary of the Oka. It is long, and has a drainage basin of . ). Strata belonging to the Zapaltyubian are not exposed in the Moscow Basin, though they are found in the
Donets Basin
The Seversky Donets () or Siverskyi Donets (), usually simply called the Donets, is a river on the south of the East European Plain. It originates in the Central Russian Upland, north of Belgorod, flows south-east through Ukraine (Kharkiv, Done ...
and the
Urals
The Ural Mountains ( ; rus, Ура́льские го́ры, r=Uralskiye gory, p=ʊˈralʲskʲɪjə ˈɡorɨ; ba, Урал тауҙары) or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western ...
.
In the regional stratigraphy of the United Kingdom (and Western Europe as a whole), the Serpukhovian corresponds to the lower half of the
Namurian
The Namurian is a stage in the regional stratigraphy of northwest Europe with an age between roughly 326 and 313 Ma (million years ago). It is a subdivision of the Carboniferous system or period and the regional Silesian series. The Namurian ...
regional stage. This portion of the Namurian includes three substages, from oldest to youngest: the Pendleian, Arnsbergian and Chokierian. Only the lowermost Chokierian falls in the Serpukhovian, the upper part of the substage corresponds to the earliest
Bashkirian.
In North America, the Serpukhovian corresponds to the upper part of the
Chesterian
The Mississippian ( , also known as Lower Carboniferous or Early Carboniferous) is a subperiod in the geologic timescale or a subsystem of the geologic record. It is the earlier of two subperiods of the Carboniferous period lasting from roughly ...
regional stage, while in
China the Serpukhovian is roughly equivalent to the Dewuan regional stage.
Serpukhovian extinction
The largest extinction event of the Carboniferous Period occurred in the early Serpukhovian. This extinction came in the form of ecological turnovers, with the demise of diverse Mississippian assemblages of
crinoids
Crinoids are marine animals that make up the class Crinoidea. Crinoids that are attached to the sea bottom by a stalk in their adult form are commonly called sea lilies, while the unstalked forms are called feather stars or comatulids, which are ...
and
rugose corals. After the extinction, they were replaced by species-poor cosmopolitan ecosystems. The extinction selectively targeted species with a narrow range of temperature preferences, as cooling seawater led to habitat loss for tropical specialists. In the following
Late Paleozoic ice age of the
Late Carboniferous
Late may refer to:
* LATE, an acronym which could stand for:
** Limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy, a proposed form of dementia
** Local-authority trading enterprise, a New Zealand business law
** Local average treatment effect, ...
and
Early Permian, both speciation and extinction rates were low.
This may have been driven by a reduction of carbonate platforms, which otherwise would have helped to maintain high biodiversity. The long-term ecological impact of the Serpukhovian extinction may have exceeded that of the
Ordovician-Silurian extinction, where taxonomic diversity was abruptly devastated but quickly recovered to pre-extinction levels.
Sepkoski (1996) plotted an extinction rate of around 23-24% for the Serpukhovian as a whole, based on marine
genera which persist through multiple stages.
Bambach (2006) found an early Serpukhovian extinction rate of 31% among all marine genera. Using an extinction probability procedure generated from the
Paleobiology Database
The Paleobiology Database is an online resource for information on the distribution and classification of fossil animals, plants, and microorganisms.
History
The Paleobiology Database (PBDB) originated in the NCEAS-funded Phanerozoic Marine Pale ...
, McGhee ''et al''. (2013) estimated an extinction rate as high as 39% for marine genera.
On the other hand, Stanley (2016) estimated that the extinction was much smaller, at a loss of only 13-14 % of marine genera.
Relative to other biological crises, the Serpukhovian extinction was much more selective in its effects on different evolutionary faunas. Stanley (2007) estimated that the early Serpukhovian saw the loss of 37.5% of marine genera in the
Paleozoic evolutionary fauna. Only 15.4% of marine genera in the
modern evolutionary fauna would have been lost along the same time interval.
This disconnect, and the severity of the extinction as a whole, is reminiscent of the
Late Devonian extinction
The Late Devonian extinction consisted of several extinction events in the Late Devonian Epoch, which collectively represent one of the five largest mass extinction events in the history of life on Earth. The term primarily refers to a major ex ...
events. Another similarity is how the Serpukhovian extinction was seemingly driven by low rates of speciation, rather than particularly high rates of extinction.
See also
*
Fossil Grove
References
Further reading
* ; 1890: ''Carboniferous deposits of the Moscow region and artesian waters near Moscow'', Trudy Geologicheskogo Komiteta 5(5), pp. 1–182 .
External links
Carboniferous timescaleat the website of the Norwegian network of offshore records of geology and stratigraphy
www.palaeos.com
{{Geological history, p, p, state=collapsed
Mississippian geochronology
Geological ages