§21. MAMMOTH EPOCH. loo 



A section exposed in an abrupt cliff on the sea of 

 Azof, at Taganrog, will explain the usual character of the 

 deposits : * — 



1. Tertiary newer miocene limestone : forming the base of the cliff: 



20 feet. 



2. Band of finely laminated sands, full of shells, specifically identical 



with those that inhabit the adjacent river Ton. 



3. Clay drift, containing numerous bones and teeth of the Mam- 



moth : 50 feet. 



From the nature of this drift, and its distribution at 

 various levels, SirR. Murchison infers that the greater part 

 of this low continent, unlike the Ural and higher portions of 

 Siberia, was not dry land during the existence of the 

 Mammoths, nor in the period immediately antecedent to 

 our own ; but was in the same subaqueous condition as the 

 low lands of Northern Siberia, w^hen the bones were trans- 

 ported into the then existing estuaries and bays. 



21. Siberia and Russia en the mammoth epoch. — 

 These observations of Sir E. Murchison clearly prove, 

 that the mammoths cannot have inhabited the northern- 

 most tracts of Siberia in which their remains are im- 

 bedded, for the wide and low tracts of that sterile region 

 were beneath the sea at the period when these extinct 

 animals existed ; the bones and carcasses must, therefore, 

 have drifted thither, and probably from a considerable 

 distance. The mammalian remains do not occur on the 

 elevated chains of hills ; and from the physical structure 

 of the region, it is probable that not only the Ural and Altai 

 mountains, but also their northern ridges and terraces, which 

 include more than half of Siberia, were covered with forests 

 in some parts, and with brushwood steppes in others ; and 

 herds of mammoths may have migrated thence in the 

 summer season, (which is even now intensely hot,) to the 



* Geol. Russ. vol. i. p. 502. 



