Results are reported from a pilot fission-track study of a west-east traverse across the southern Urals from Sterlitamak through to the Dzhabyk granite, east of Magnitogorsk, which was undertaken in order to study the low-temperature (≤300°C) thermotectonic post-Uralian history of the mountain belt. The transect crosses the major tectonic units including the Main Uralian Fault, the suture zone which separates the East European Craton from Palaeozoic oceanic, island arc and continental terranes of Asia. Zircon fission-track ages range from 226 Ma to 604 Ma in the foreland thrust and fold belt, with a single age of 262 Ma in the Magnitogorsk Zone. An age grouping of about 250 Ma for zircons on either side of the Main Uralian Fault suggests that there has been no differential movement identifiable through fission-track analysis along this line since the Triassic. The similarity of apatite ages, ranging from ∼180 to ∼210 Ma further verifies little differential movement within the footwall to the suture since the Jurassic. In the central part of the Magnitogorsk Zone, apatite ages are older; they are slightly annealed crystallisation cooling ages but further confirm that there has been only little tectonic activity since the Triassic. Except in the East Uralian Zone, apatite fission-track analysis reveals variable denudation rates: the highest rates occurred during the Permo-Triassic ending at about 210 Ma just prior to the final development of the Jurassic peneplain; this was followed possibly by a period of burial before final cooling/exhumation from approximately middle Cretaceous onwards.