Abstract A revised amphibian zonation for the European Pennsylvanian and Cisuralian (Upper Carboniferous to Lower Permian) with nine amphibian zones is presented. The index fossils belong to species-chronoclines with two or three closely related species. The time resolution of these amphibian zones is about 1.5–3.0 Ma. Biostratigraphical correlations with amphibian zones are applicable to 16 basins in the Czech Republic, Poland, France, Italy and Germany. The biostratigraphical potential of other tetrapods is discussed.

Abstract The Late Pennsylvanian was a time of ice ages and climate dynamics that drove biotic changes in the marine and non-marine realms. The apex of late Paleozoic glaciation in southern Gondwana was during the Late Pennsylvanian, rather than the early Permian as inferred from more equatorial Pangaea. Waxing and waning of ice sheets drove cyclothemic sedimentation in the Pangaean tropics, providing an astrochronology tuned to Earth-orbital cycles, tied to climatic changes, reflected in aeolian loess and palaeosol archives. Vegetation change across the Middle–Late Pennsylvanian boundary was not a ‘Carboniferous rainforest collapse’, but instead a complex and drawn out step-wise change from one kind of rainforest to another. Changes in marine invertebrate and terrestrial vertebrate animals occurred across the Middle–Late Pennsylvanian boundary, but these did not lead to substantive changes in the organization of those communities. The base of the Upper Pennsylvanian is the base of the Kasimovian Stage, and this boundary needs a GSSP to standardize and stabilize chronostratigraphic usage. To avoid further chronostratigraphic confusion, the Cantabrian Substage should be abandoned, and the traditional Westphalian–Stephanian boundary should be returned to and recognized as the time of major floristic change, the lycospore extinction event.

Abstract: The most extensive Permian tetrapod (amphibian and reptile) fossil records from the western USA (New Mexico to Texas) and South Africa have been used to define 11 land vertebrate faunachrons (LVFs). These are, in ascending order, the Coyotean, Seymouran, Mitchellcreekian, Redtankian, Littlecrotonian, Kapteinskraalian, Gamkan, Hoedemakeran, Steilkransian, Platbergian and Lootsbergian. These faunachrons provide a biochronological framework with which to assign ages to, and correlate, Permian tetrapod fossil assemblages. Intercalated marine strata, radioisotopic ages and magnetostratigraphy were used to correlate the Permian LVFs to the standard global chronostratigraphic scale with varying degrees of precision. Such correlations identified the following significant events in Permian tetrapod evolution: a Coyotean chronofaunal event (end Coyotean); Redtankian events (Mitchellcreekian–Littlecrotonian); Olson’s gap (late Littlecrotonian); a therapsid event (Kapteinskraalian); a dinocephalian extinction event (end Gamkan); and a latest Permian extinction event (Platbergian–Lootsbergian boundary). Problems of incompleteness, endemism and taxonomy, and the relative lack of non-biochronological age control continue to hinder the refinement and correlation of a Permian timescale based on tetrapod biochronology. Nevertheless, the global Permian timescale based on tetrapod biochronology is a robust tool for both global and regional age assignment and correlation. Advances in Permian tetrapod biochronology will come from new fossil discoveries, more detailed biostratigraphy and additional alpha taxonomic studies based on sound evolutionary taxonomic principles.