Late Triassic
The late epoch of the Triassic (and corresponding Upper Triassic series), comprising Carnian, Norian, Rhaetian.
Language and route: Modern English ordinal scientific term. English late (time interval) and upper (corresponding series of rocks); not a coined Greek compound.
Literal gloss: late / upper (position within the Triassic)
The name and its history
Conventional stratigraphic division, not a single attributed coinage · Nineteenth–twentieth-century international stage standardisation
- What does the word literally mean?
- English ‘late’ in sequence; stratigraphic Upper describes position in a rock succession.
- What did the original author mean?
- No individual coiner is asserted. These are conventional ordinal subdivisions within a Triassic classification whose stage names and correlations were assembled over many decades.
- Why was the name needed?
- Geologists needed to express succession and correlation without treating one local lithology as a universal timescale. The original Trias named three Germanic lithostratigraphic formations; marine Tethyan ages only later provided a global chronological standard.
- What evidence supported the original concept?
- Correlation of fossil zones and physical successions made it possible to distinguish late Triassic time from regional facies labels. The name does not imply a special biological event.
- How has geology changed the concept?
- The ICS defines the Upper Triassic using global age/stage order. Keuper is a regional suite of siliciclastic and evaporitic beds; Carnian–Rhaetian ages depend on international fossil and other markers.
Further historical context
No individual coiner is asserted. These are conventional ordinal subdivisions within a Triassic classification whose stage names and correlations were assembled over many decades.
Geologists needed to express succession and correlation without treating one local lithology as a universal timescale. The original Trias named three Germanic lithostratigraphic formations; marine Tethyan ages only later provided a global chronological standard.
The ICS defines the Upper Triassic using global age/stage order. Keuper is a regional suite of siliciclastic and evaporitic beds; Carnian–Rhaetian ages depend on international fossil and other markers.
Editorial qualification
No evidence that the common ordinal adjective was coined by one individual; distinguishing time from rocks is more important than assigning a false inventor.
Related names
Sources
- ICS International Chronostratigraphic Chart, 2026/06 — Official current ranks and names; ages are subject to revision
- 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
- Lucas et al., Dating the origin of dinosaurs (Triassic correlation background) — Difference between continental Germanic rock series and Alpine marine ammonoid stages