The stage was introduced into scientific literature by Russian geologist Alexandr Antonovich Stukenberg (Alexander Stuckenberg) in 1890.
The top of the Kungurian (the base of the Roadian and the Guadalupian series) is defined as the place in the stratigraphic record where fossils of conodont species Jinogondolella nanginkensis first appear.
occur in the fossil record, and the end of this stage whitnessed one of the greatest faunal turnovers of the Permian.
[7][8] Howerver, higher-resolution stratigraphic data suggest that this even is actually a slow decline over 20 Ma that started in the Sakmarian and that may have extended into the Roadian, with many lineages of early synapsids becoming extinct in the Kungurian.
[9][10] However, assessment of the exact timing of these extinctions is hampered by a gap in the fossil record of continental vertebrates in the late Kungurian, at least in Texas and Oklahoma, two states that have an unparalleled fossil record of such taxa for the early to mid-Kungurian.