The two-volume monograph "Vendian System: Vol. 1 Paleontology, Vol. 2 Regional Geology" is a synthesis of studies carried out over 30 years and devoted to the crucial problem of stratigraphic geology and the history of organic evolution at the Precambrian-Phanerozoic boundary. The studies showed the necessity in recognizing a new stra tigraphic system - the Vendian (for the first time in the last 100 years). Volume 1 deals with different concepts concerning the nature and importance of the Precambrian-Cambrian period, the history of rec ognition of the Vendian (first as a complex and then as...