DK. H. POHLIG OX THE TLIOCENE OP MARAGHA ETC. 177 



13. On the Pliocene o/Maragha, Persia, ancZ zfe Resemblance ^o 

 that of PiKEEMi in Greece ; on Fossil Elephant Remains of 

 Caucasia and Persia ; and on the Results of a Monograph of 

 the Fossil Elephants of Germany and Italy. By Dr. H. 

 PoHLiG. (Communicated by Dr. G. J. Hinde, F.G.S.) (Read 

 January 27, 1886.) 



I. 



In 1884 I had the opportunity of making a geological tour in 

 Persia, especially in the northern provinces, one of my principal 

 objects being to excavate a deposit of Pliocene mammals discovered 

 about 30 years ago by the Russian travellers Gobel and Khanikoff 

 near Alaragha, to the east of the lake of Urumia. Abich, Brandt, and 

 Grewingk * have already published short notes upon the subject, 

 but the locality where these fossil bones were found has not been 

 exactly specified. 



Arrived at Maragha I found several deposits of fossil bones, and 

 excavated them as long as the season permitted. The results 

 obtained I first announced in two letters sent from Maragha to 

 Prof, von Lasaulx f and to Dr. Tictze J, including a preliminary 

 list of the Pliocene mammals of Maragha which had been obtained 

 up to that time, and so far as I could determine them on the spot 

 without means of comparison. The collections made by me in 

 Persia are now mostly deposited in the Museum of Prof, von Fritsch 

 at HaUe. 



In the course of last year a young German residing in Persia 

 successfully continued my excavations at Maragha, and it was a 

 portion of the bones collected by him that M. Gaudry saw in the 

 Museum at Vienna (see Geol. Mag. December 1885, p. 558). 



As I am now engaged in preparing a monograph on the fossil 

 mammals of Maragha, I wish in this paper to give a sketch of the 

 deposits containing these remains and also a supplement to the list 

 already pubhshed. 



The Maragha valley owes its origin to a wide fissure of dislocation 

 traversing in an equatorial direction the chain of Cretaceous (and 

 Jurassic ?) mountains bordering the great lake of Urumia on the 

 east. Through that fissure the waters coming from the north-east, 

 from the volcanic mountains of Sahend covered with snow, in 

 Pliocene times already flowed into the Urumia lake, which was 

 much higher then than now. At this time the valley of which 

 Maragha is the centre was an inlet of the lake, traversed by the 

 rapid streams flowing from the Sahend. Hence the Pliocene 

 deposits of Maragha are of flu vio -lacustrine origin, like those of 

 Pikermi, near Athens, with which I was able to compare them 

 directly on my return journey from Persia, and like those of the 

 Val d'Arno, near Florence, which I had previously visited. 



* Verhandl. k.k. geol. Reichsanst. 1881, p. 296. 



t Verhandl. Naturh. Ver. d. preuss. Rheinl. 1884, Sitzungsb, p. 174. 



j Verhandl. k.k. geol. Reichsanst. 1884, p. 282. 



