The SCCS promotes and coordinates international cooperation among various geologic
specialists for the purpose of defining standard Global chronostratigraphic boundaries within the
Carboniferous System. The GSSP for the Devonian-Carboniferous boundary is at La Serre in
southern France (Paproth and Streel, 1984; Paproth et al., 1991), and the Carboniferous-Permian
boundary GSSP at the top has been selected in northern Kazakhstan (Davydov et al., 1998). The
Mid-Carboniferous boundary GSSP is preserved in Arrow Canyon, Nevada, U.S.A. (Lane et al.,
1999; Richards et al., 2002), and it subdivides the Carboniferous into two subsystems, the
Mississippian Subsystem below and the Pennsylvanian Subsystem above. There are serious
problems with the GSSP at the base of the Carboniferous (Kaiser, 2009), such that the boundary
needs to be at least placed at lower stratigraphic position, and both a new event marker and
stratigraphic section are probably required. The immediate SCCS goals are to redefine the
Carboniferous-Devonian boundary and select the best stage boundaries within the two
Carboniferous subsystems to facilitate global correlation within the system.