The Vendian System

The two-volume monograph "Vendian System: Vol. 1 Paleontology, Vol. 2 Regional Geology" is a synthesis of studies carried out over 30 years and devoted to the crucial problem of stratigraphic geology and the history of organic evolution at the Precambrian-Phanerozoic boundary. The studies showed the necessity in recognizing a new stra­ tigraphic system - the Vendian (for the first time in the last 100 years). Volume 1 deals with different concepts concerning the nature and importance of the Precambrian-Cambrian period, the history of rec­ ognition of the Vendian (first as a complex and then as a system) and correlative units of the Upper Precambrian. A detailed promorphol­ ogical analysis of the Vendian Metazoa is used as a basis for recog­ nition of some new major taxa of multicellular organisms, and is fol­ lowed by a comprehensive systematic description of all major groups of organic life in the Vendian which include: unique fauna of multicel­ lular, non-skeletal organisms (from the world's richest localities along the Zimny and Letny Coasts in the White Sea area, the Dniester Basin of Podolia in the Ukraine, and Olenek Uplift, as well as peculiar loca­ lities of the Metazoa in the Urals); trace fossils, multicellular mega­ scopic algae, actinomycetes and organisms of uncertain systematic position, various microfossils (acritarch and filamentous forms); cal­ careous algae from the uppermost Vendian; stromatolites and micro­ phytolites. All the described forms are illustrated in the correspond­ ing plates. References are given in Volumes 1 and 2.