FAUNA 
OF THE 
INDIAN FLUVIATILE DEPOSITS. 
RHINOCEROS DECCANENSIS, 
A new Species discovered near Gokak, Belg-aum District, by R. B. FOOTE, F.G.S., 
Geological Survey of India. 
In May 1871, while looking for sections in the hed of a small nullah, I came 
upon some fragments of fossil bones and teeth, and amongst them part of an upper 
molar of a Rhinoceros. I at once set to tracing out the source whence these 
bones might have been derived, and, after closely examining the banks of the 
nullah for a few dozen yards further up its course, found a row of large mammalian 
teeth exposed at a height of 3 feet above the bed of the nullah and fully 8 feet or 
more below the top of the bed of black clay which here forms the bank, and which 
black clay passes up into the typical regur of this neighbourhood. The spot at 
which this discovery was made lies about 3^ miles east north-east of Gokak (a 
talook town in the Belgaum District, well-known from the proximity of the great 
fall of the Gatparba River), and about f of a mile south south-east of the little 
village of Chickdowlee, immediately west of which the small nullah falls into the 
Gatparba River. 
This small nullah* has cut deeply into and through the regur at that spot, 
and has formed a small cliff on the face of which the row of teeth abovementioned 
was exposed. 
The rain-wash from the upper part of the little cliff had covered up every- 
thing, the teeth excepted, but on removing it carefully, I found the teeth belonged 
to the right ramus of the mandible of a Rhinoceros. 
Beneath the rain- wash the black clay, though much broken up by sun-cracks, 
was hard, and the angular fragments were so closely wedged together that it 
required a good deal of time and trouble to remove those immediately surrounding 
the bones without disturbing the latter, which were not only extremely brittle, but 
also much comminuted in situ by the action of sun-cracks. 
* The Chickdowlee nuUah is a small stream rising in the hiUs to the north-west of Buneechmurdee, and not as it 
is represented on the map, the extension of the large nullah flowing past Kelvee, which reaUy falls into the great 
Mumdapoor nuHah close to the viUage of Maldinee. 
