The chair of Historical Geology and Paleontology was founded in 1965 as a part of the Department of Geology and Geophysics.

Guided by their teachers, the chair students have an opportunity:

• to gain practical skills in working with fossils of organisms for solving various geological tasks of both regional and global scale;
• to study the morphology of different groups of invertebrates, to master methods of working with paleontological material, to define taxonomic identity of fossils and geological age of enclosing deposits;
• to study taxonomic structure and evolution of plant life of geological past of the planet for determining the laws of biological evolution and defining the age and origin of deposits of fossil fuels (caustobioliths);
• to explore methods of determining the age of rocks with emphases on the concept of geological time and application of palaeobiological method in geochronology;
• to consider physical, lithologic and other methods of partition and correlation of stratified rocks (fundamentals of stratigraphy);
• to study the laws of sediment accumulation in modern seas and on land, the disposal and distribution of organisms within, the evolution of sedimentation throughout the history of the Earth, the processes of deposition on land;
• to study component parts of the platform and folded belts, the stages of their evolution, and the main tectonic structures of the bottom of oceans;
• to focus on the relations of geological and biological processes throughout the history of the Earth, the influence of the biota on the formation of mineral deposits including oil, coal, combustible shales, peat and other biogenic rocks.

The chair has prepared 199 specialists in Palaeontology and Stratigraphy. The graduates are now working in geological research and industrial organizations and other sectors of the national economy in Russia and abroad: in the USA, France, Canada and Japan.