Lower Carboniferous of the St. Petersburg region (northwestern Russia) / A field Guidebook of XVIII International Congress on the Carboniferous and Permian. St. Petersburg, August, 8–10 / Нижний каменноугольный отдел Санкт-Петербургского региона

Нижний карбон Санкт-Петербургского региона (северо-запад России) / Полевой путеводитель XVIII Международного конгресса по каменноугольному и пермскому периодам. Санкт-Петербург, 8-10 августа.

Lower Carboniferous deposits are distributed within a wide area of the northwestern part of the Moscow basin. They have been known for many years as the source of mineral deposits of bauxite, brown coal, and other industrial minerals, including fireproof clays and building materials as the most important. 
The geologic investigation of these Lower Carboniferous deposits began more than 200 years ago. Many well-known geologists and academicians such as S. G. Gmelin, S. F. Olivieri, G. P. Gelmersen, R. Murchison, E. Verneuil, N. P. Barbot de Marni, E. Eichwald, A.A. Inostrantsev, and P. A. Zamyatchensky made the first step in the geological investigation of the region, laid thefoundation of the stratigraphy of the Lower Carboniferous strata of the northwestern part of the Moscow basin. 
However, much extensive geological work was done on these deposits over a 30–60 year period of the last century. The significance of these works is difficult to overestimate. During this time detailed investigation of many sections was carried out by many workers (Yanishevsky, 1936; Forsh, 1935; Hecker, 1938a; Sokolov, 1944, 1946, 1959). The stratigraphical chart of the Lower Carboniferous deposits was constructed (Bogdanova, 1929; Sokolov, 1939, 1941; Kotlukov, Yanishevsky, 1948), features of cyclic sedimentation and variability of the lithological complexes was documented, and data on facies composition and sedimentation regimes were found (Bruns, 1935, 1939; Vishnyakov, 1940; Ulmer, 1935, 1946). A major breakthrough was the work on the paleontological documentation of the ages of the various strata and their correlation with the southern part of the Moscow syneclise (Yanishewsky, 1935, 1937, 1954; Zhelezkova, 1938; Pozner, 1951; Ganelina, 1951; Shlykova, 1951). Also, paleoecological investigation was first carried out in
our country (Hecker, 1938b; 1940).

These important geological investigations of the Lower Carboniferous strata of this area provided the main data that supported the publication of geological maps of 1:200 000 scale, delineating the whole area of Lower Carboniferous rock distribution (Sammet, 1959; Kofman, 1960; Aleksandrova, Sverbenkova, 1960; Ostrometskaya, 1963). Knowledge of the geology of the region was summarized in a multi-authored monograph entitled “Geology of the USSR, v. 1, Leningrad, Pskov and Novgorod regions” (ed. Selivanova and Kofman, 1971). The structure and stratigraphy of the Lower Carboniferous deposits in this region are still of great interest at the present time because of the revisions of stage subdivisions and their boundaries in the International Stratigraphical Scale, and auxiliary problems of regional and world wide stratigraphical correlation. <...>