WHOLE VOL, SKELETAL REMAINS OF EARLY MAN HRDLICKA 29 



Paleontological work in Java had commenced well before the ad- 

 vent of Dubois, and resulted in the discovery in the central parts of 

 the island, more particularly along the Bengawan or Solo river and its 

 tributaries, of fluviatile Pliocene to Pleistocene strata, parts of which 

 proved to be rich in fossil remains of the fauna and flora of those 

 times. In his best early report on these matters,' Dr. Dubois gives the 

 following information : 



By order of the Netherlands Indian Government I conducted in Java, from 

 1890 to 1895, explorations for a fossil vertebrate fauna, of which already some 

 remains had been discovered, many years ago, by Junghuhn and others, and later 

 extensively described by Prof. K. Martin, of Leiden. I found a very large quan- 

 tity of remains of mammals and reptiles, for the most part derived from extinct 

 species, which show, as might be expected, an unmistakable relation to the later 

 Tertiary avid Pleistocene faunae of India. 



The chief localities of these finds are in the southern slope of a range of low 

 hills, the Kendengs, which extends between the residences Kediri, Madiun, and 

 Surakarta on one side, and Rembang and Samarang on the other, in a length of 

 about 60 miles. The area in which these vertebrate remains are abundantly 

 found, in many places, may have on an average a breadth of from one to three 

 miles. They are contained in beds of cemented volcanic tuff, consisting of clay, 

 sand, lapilli stone, which especially, through the very general occurrence of the 

 remains of freshwater animals, and of that fluviatile structure which English 

 geologists call current-bedding, or false bedding, prove to be of fluviatile origin. 

 The strata have undergone, in the whole area, considerable disturbances by fold- 

 ing, on account of which they have, from east to west, dips of 3° to 15° in a 

 general southerly direction. The whole formation reaches a maximum thickness 

 of more than 350 meters. The strata rest, unconformably, upon beds of marine 

 marl, sand, and limestone, recently determined by Prof. K. Martin to be of 

 Pliocene age. The fossil vertebrate fauna, which they contain, is everywhere in 

 the Kendeng, and also in other places in Java, the same, and a homogeneous one. 

 Its age can only be judged when the description of my collection, which I intend 

 to give in the course of a few years, shall be published. But I have studied it 

 already a little, and it can be said, in accordance with geological circumstances, 

 and the relations which this fauna has with the Post-Tertiary and Pleistocene 

 vertebrate faunae of India, that, most probably, it is young Pliocene ; in no case, 

 however, can it be younger than the oldest Pleistocene. For, whilst on the one 

 hand the species surely belong almost exclusively to living genera — only the 

 genus Leptobos and the sub-genera Stegodon and Hexaprotodon are extinct — 

 and it must therefore be younger than the principal part of the Upper Miocene 

 or Lower Pliocene Siwalik-fauna, including not a few extinct genera; on the 

 other hand, the number of the extinct species seems to be in proportion some- 

 what greater than that of the Narbada-fauna, which is put in the early Pleisto- 

 cene. Further, the inclination which the strata show does not well agree with a 

 Pleistocene age 



^Dubois, Eugene, On Pithecanthropus erectus: A Transitional Form Between 

 Man and the Apes. Sci. Trans. Roy. Dub. Soc, Dublin, Vol. 6, ser. 2, pp. 1-18, 

 1898. 



