Tournaisian
first stage and age of the Mississippian subsystem and subperiod and of the Carboniferous system and period
The Tournaisian is in the ICS geologic timescale the lowest stage or oldest age of the Mississippian, the oldest subsystem of the Carboniferous. The Tournaisian age lasted from 358.86 Ma to 346.7 Ma. It is preceded by the Famennian (the uppermost stage of the Devonian) and is followed by the Viséan. In global stratigraphy, the Tournaisian contains two substages: the Hastarian (lower Tournaisian) and Ivorian (upper Tournaisian). These two substages were originally designated as European regional stages.
Name and regional alternatives
The Tournaisian was named after the Belgian city of Tournai. It was introduced in scientific literature by Belgian geologist André Hubert Dumont in 1832. Like many Devonian and lower Carboniferous stages, the Tournaisian is a unit from West European regional stratigraphy that is now used in the official international time scale.
The Tournaisian correlates with the regional North American Kinderhookian and lower Osagean stages and the Chinese Tangbagouan regional stage. In the British Isles, where the Hastarian and Ivorian are difficult to distinguish, the entire Tournaisian was equivalent to the Courceyan regional stage.
“Tournaisian” enters the record as first stage and age of the Mississippian subsystem and subperiod and of the Carboniferous system and period. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Tournaisian, first and stage can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q940381. Authority coordinates are 43.556, 3.357. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1832.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tournaisian” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.