Carnian
First Late Triassic age, named for the Carnic Alps; a marine-fossil stage beyond the Germanic Keuper scheme.
Language and route: International scientific terminology from Alpine geographical name. Alpine geographical name place-name Carnic Alps → international scientific stage-name Carnian (English); older place-name origin not inferred.
Literal gloss: of/from Carnic Alps
The name and its history
Edmund von Mojsisovics · 1873 (historical attribution)
- What does the word literally mean?
- ‘of/from Carnic Alps’, referring to the Carnic Alps, near the modern Austria–Italy border.
- What did the original author mean?
- Mojsisovics used the Alpine faunal succession to distinguish a marine interval in the upper part of the Triassic, named after the Carnic Alps.
- Why was the name needed?
- The tripartite Germanic sedimentary succession did not give sufficiently transferable stage boundaries in marine Tethyan settings.
- What evidence supported the original concept?
- Ammonoids from Alpine carbonate strata furnished discriminating assemblages; later conodonts, magnetostratigraphy and associated markers improved international correlation.
- How has geology changed the concept?
- The modern Carnian begins at the approved GSSP at Prati di Stuores in the Dolomites. This lower boundary is not the limit of any single Carnic Alps formation.
Further historical context
The name invokes the Carnic Alps, near the modern Austria–Italy border. Mojsisovics used the Alpine faunal succession to distinguish a marine interval in the upper part of the Triassic, named after the Carnic Alps.
The tripartite Germanic sedimentary succession did not give sufficiently transferable stage boundaries in marine Tethyan settings. Ammonoids from Alpine carbonate strata furnished discriminating assemblages; later conodonts, magnetostratigraphy and associated markers improved international correlation.
The modern Carnian begins at the approved GSSP at Prati di Stuores in the Dolomites. This lower boundary is not the limit of any single Carnic Alps formation.
Editorial qualification
The 1873 date is based on later historical review and should not be treated as verification of the exact wording in Mojsisovics’s publication.
Related names
Sources
- ICS International Chronostratigraphic Chart, 2026/06 — Official current ranks and names; ages are subject to revision
- Gómez and colleagues (2009), Geology as a local science, stage-origin tables — Secondary author/date and geographic roots; some attributions inconsistent with specialist histories
- Mojsisovics, Waagen and Diener (1895), Entwurf einer Gliederung der pelagischen Sedimente des Trias-Systems, pp. 1271–1302 — Digitised contemporary 1895 joint proposal; contemporaneous basis, not necessarily first use of each name
- ICS ratified boundary GSSP register — Ratified GSSPs; check status separately from naming history