Geologicheskii Vestnik

Dear Reader, this issue of Geologicheskii Vestnik is somewhat unusual. It contains both original scientific papers and a number of publications dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the birth of D.Sci. (Geol.-Mineral.) Viktor Alekseevich Maslov. V.A. Maslov worked within the walls of the Mining and Geological Institute...Institute of Geology of the Ufa Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences (there are many different names of this Institute, but the essence is the same) from 1952 to 2015, i.e. 63 full years.

In the early 1970s. he initiated the search for conodonts in siliceous rocks and jaspers, often found in the form of interlayers among the Paleozoic volcanogenic strata of the eastern slope of the Southern Urals. The result of more than 40 subsequent years of intense and painstaking work was the Devonian stratigraphic schemes of all ore-bearing (primarily – massive sulfide deposits) and adjacent areas of the Magnitogorsk megazone of the Southern Urals, which he created together with the staff of the Laboratory of Paleozoic Stratigraphy of the Institute. These stratigraphic schemes have no analogues in the world in terms of detail and validity with actual paleontological (on conodonts) material. The results of determining the age of many stratons form the basis for more than 20 sheets of the new South Ural series of the State Geological Map at a scale of 1:200000. Today it is already obvious that nothing fundamentally new will be done in this direction for many, many years.

Research results by V.A. Maslov, of course, is not limited to a few lines above. More about them is said in a number of articles (both original and in the History of Geology section) of this issue of the Geologicheskii Vestnik. These studies can rightfully be considered one of the cornerstones of the “Golden Age of Russian Geology.” Like other works by the scientists of the Institute of Geology, created in Ufa 75 years ago, they largely determine the current level of fundamental ideas about the geology of the Southern Urals.