THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE 



NEW SERIES. DECADE VI. VOL. 1. 



No. VIIL— AUGUST, 1914. 



OE,ZG(-I3Sr.A.Il. .A.E.TICLES. 



I. — On the Pleistocene Ossiferous Dkposits of the Balearic 



Islands. 



By Dorothea M. A. Bate. 

 (PLATE XXV.) 

 1. Mallorca. 



LIKE so many of the islands of the Mediterranean the Balearic 

 group has yielded interesting remains of an extinct Pleistocene 

 fauna. These have been discovered in cave breccias and in fissures 

 of which a brief description may be of interest. 



Previous to 1909 the only record of the occurrence of any Pleistocene 

 mammalian remains in the Balearic Islands was, I believe, that of 

 De la Marmora,^ who mentioned indications of a bone breccia in the 

 hill of Belver, near Palma, where he observed a bone which appeared 

 to be that of a Lagomys or a rabbit. Since then, as the result of 

 three short visits undertaken by the writer, a quantity of ossiferous 

 remains have been obtained from the caves and fissures of Mallorca 

 and Menorca. It may be mentioned that I failed to locate the 

 breccia recorded near Belver. 



Mallorca (Text-fig. 1) is the largest island of the group, in shape an 

 oblique square, or trapezoid, containing an area of 430 square miles. 

 Its geological formation lias been exhaustively studied by Hermite - 

 and others, and it will only be necessary here to state briefly that it 

 is almost entirely composed of Jurassic and Miocene Limestones. The 

 extent of either is very noticeably defined in the general appearance 

 and elevation of the country, the former being' invariably the more 

 rugged and mountainous. Palma, the capital and largest coast town, 

 lies on the edge of a strip of diluvial soil which stretches across the 

 island to the marsh lands of the Albufera on the Bay of Alcudia in 

 the north-east. Other formations, including some of Lower Eocene 

 age, but of still smaller extent are also to be seen, but have no 

 immediate bearing on the subject in hand. 



The Jurassic Limestone occurs in two isolated masses. The larger 

 of these forms the chief mountain chain, which runs in a north- 

 easterly direction from the Islet of Dragonera to Cabo Formenton ; 

 the distance between these two points represents the greatest width 

 of the island. This range rises to a height of 1,445 metres and 

 exercises a most beneficial influence on the climate of the fertile 



^ "Observations geologiques sur les deux lies Baleares " : Mem. Accad. Sci., 

 Torino, s^r. I, vol. xxxvii, p. 59, 1855. 



" Etudes cjL'ologiqiies stir les lies BaUares, Paris, 1879. 



decade VI. — VOL. I. — NO. viii. 22 



