Barbot de Marni, Nikolai Pavlovich

Born Jan. 31 (Feb. 12), 1829 (according to other information, 1831 or 1832), in Perm’ Province; died Apr. 4 (16), 1877, in St. Petersburg. Russian geologist. Professor at the St. Petersburg Mining Institute (1866).

Between 1860 and 1862, Barbot de Marni led an expedition to the Kalmyk steppes. In 1864 he studied Permian deposits in northern Russia. He identified the Sarmatian stage in Neocene deposits in southern European Russia, and he called Pliocene limestones in the Odessa region the Pon-tian stage (1869). In exploring Middle Asia (1874), he proved that a Cretaceous, not a Tertiary, system was predominant among the sedimentary formations of the Aral-Caspian region. Barbot de Marni also studied coal deposits in the Moscow vicinity and the mineralogy of the southern and central regions of European Russia and the Urals.