Marine Permian sequences and faunas are widely distributed on the Australian continent and Tasmania. Marine fossils were found in eastern Australia as early as 1804 and were first described in 1825. Progressive investigations during the nineteenth century established the essential constituents of the eastern Australian faunas and the general nature of the sedimentary sequences. Nevertheless the faunas were invariably ascribed by local stratigraphers to the Carboniferous System, or after 1879 when the term Permo-Carboniferous was introduced by Robert Etheridge Jr, to the latter age. Rarely, a Permian age was indicated for the sequence.
Western Australian Marine faunas were not studied systematically until the 1880s and available collections were small. However, even these early studies revealed few similarities with eastern faunas. Western faunas were invariably referred to the Carboniferous Period until well into the twentieth century.
