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11. O.N' TUE Geological Age of the Jebel el Qatkaxi Deposits. 



Siuce the pablicatiou of Mr. BeailnelTs principal memoir on the 

 Fayuni, some criticisms have arisen as to the liorizons determined of 

 oortain of the beds forming the Lower Tertiary rocks. jS^o objection 

 lias been raised to accepting as Middle Eocene or Lutetian tlie tliree ' 

 lowest groups of the Fayum succession, viz. the Wadi Rayan, Ravine, 

 and lUrket el Qurun Series. The Qasr el Sagha Beds, which follow > 

 next in ascending order and which undoiibtedh* belong also to the 

 Lutetian (Upper Mokattam) stage of the Eocene period, as hitherto 

 advocated by all geologists who have studied them, have quite 

 recently been regarded as of Upper Eocene age by Dr. Dacque ^ in 

 a memoir on some fossil tortoises from Egypt, in connexion with 

 whicli it should be mentioned that the Upper Mokattam rocks of 

 Egypt had a short time previously been considered by Dr. Emile 

 Haug- as representing the Auversian stage of the Eocene of Europe, 

 Avhich is the lowest part of the Bartonian. 



Some conflicting views have been, likewise, published as to the 

 proper place in stratigraphy of the Jebel el Qatraid or Fluvio-marine 

 Series, which Mr. Beadnell, Dr. Blanckenhorn, and otliers assume to 

 be Bartonian or Upper Eocene. To properly understand the discussion 

 it is necessary to glance briefly at the literature dealing with this 

 question, but previously it may be well to explain that the geological 

 explorations of the Fayum were commenced by Mr. Beadnell in 1898, 

 although he published no views thereon until 1901. During that 

 period, however, Mr. Beadnell was making valuable collections of 

 fossils, chiefly invertebrates, the majority of which were ultimately 

 forwarded to the British Museum for determination, although prior to 

 this they had been subjected to examination by Dr. Blanckenhorn, 

 especially some moUuscan remains of estuai'ine character which 

 had been obtained from the Jebel el Qatrani Series, high up above 

 the vertebrate remains occurring near the base of the section. 

 Dr. Blanckenhorn, with the assistance of Dr. Oppenheim, was able 

 to recognize among these specimens certain forms of Gastropods, 

 which were characteristic of the ' Beauchamp Sands' of the Paris 

 Basin and therefore of Bartonian or Upper Eocene age, lience they 

 were regarded as belonging to that liorizon and duly published as such 

 in the year 1900.^ 



Almost simultaneously with the appearance of this first account of 

 the Jebel el Qatrani Beds and their mollusca, Mr. Beadnell placed 

 a paper before the Geological Congress at Paris, which was published 

 in li'Ol, on the geology of the ^ile and the Libyan Desert,* in 

 which reference was made to the geological structure of the Fayum. 



1 Geol. Pal. Abhandl. [Koken], N.S., vol. x, pt. iv, pp. 61, 1912. 



" Traite de G^ologie, 1911, pt. ii, p. 1503. 



•' " Neues zur Geologic unci Palaeontologie Aegyptens. — Das Palaeogen ; Das 



Eocan" : Zeitsch. Deutsch. Geol. Ges., vol. lii, p. 456, 1900. 

 ■• ' ' Deeouvertes Geologiques Kecentes dans la vallee du Nil et le Desert 



Libyen" : Congres Geol. Intern. [Paris], 1901, fasc. ii, pp. 858-61. An 



English translation of this account was privately published in London in 



the same year. 



