part 3 .] Lydetter: Fossil Mammalian Fauna of India and Burma. 
89 
The last fomation which I have provisionally placed in this newer group consists of 
certain gravels and clays from the Deccan, containing 
Deccan beds. Mammalian remains, some of which have been described 
by Mr. Foote (Pal. Ind., Ser. X, Vol. II). 
The fauna at present only comprises three genera, two of which are only known by 
fragments, and cannot be specifically determined. These are— 
Rhinoceros deccanensis (Foote). 
Bos (sp). Equus (sp). 
Mastodon pandionis, Lartet, has also been described by Falconer from superficial beds 
in the Deccan ( “ Palaeontological Memoirs,” Vol. I, p. 124). 
These gravels being superficial and undisturbed, point to the comparatively modern age 
of the beds: the bones, too, are in an extremely friable aud rotten condition, which would 
induce one to think that had they been buried for long geological periods in this pervious 
soil, they would have completely perished. At the same time, the molars of the species of 
Rhinoceros are so different from those of any living or fossil Indian species, that I cannot 
help thinking these beds may be older than those of the Nerbudda valley, or, at auy rate, that 
the Rhinoceros is one of the last survivors of an older fauna. 
The very peculiar and prominent “ cingulum” on the premolars of this species indicates 
considerable relationship with the older Acerotherium and Palceotherium. If Falconer is 
right in identifying the Deccan Mastodon with M. pandionis, this is the only instance of a 
fossil Indian Mammal being identical with a European species. 
The different groups of strata included under this head comprise those beds which have 
produced the greatest number of fossil Mammalia : I have 
Pliocene. included under the head of Pliocene-Siwalik nearly the 
whole of the Mammaliferous beds of the Sub-Himalayan 
region (with the exception of the topmost beds noted above), because we have hitherto found 
no distinction in the Mammalian Fauna of the different beds. Few identifiable Mammalian 
fossils have yet been discovered from the Malian beds of Mr. Medlieott (Mem. Geol. Surv., 
India, Vol. Ill, p. 101), nor from what appear to be their corresponding beds in the Jamb 
and Potwar country (Rec. Geol. Surv., India, Vol. IX, pt. 2) described by Mr. Medlieott. 
The main exception to this are certain fossils, to be subsequently noticed, coming from the 
south of Attock. 
Mr. Wynne (Mem. Geol. Surv., India, Vol. X, pt. ii, p. 24) has proposed to identify 
the grey sandstone and brown-clay series of the Potwar and Kohat districts with the Nahans 
of Mr. Medlieott: this, I believe, partly arose from a mistaken conception of the geological age 
of certain fossils collected by Mr. Theobald in the Ivangra and Jamii districts : these fossils 
were all collected from Siwalik and not from Nahun beds, and as they agree specifically 
with those from Mr. Wynne’s grey and brown beds, I have no hesitation in placing these, 
on palaeontological grounds only, as of Siwalik age: Mr, Medlieott agrees with this view 
(Rec. Geol. Surv., India, Vol. IX, pt. 2, p. 56). 
The whole of the Mammalian fossils (with the exception of those from near Attock) 
described by the late Dr. Falconer, were, I have not the least doubt, obtained from the typical 
Siwalik horizon of Mr. Medlieott; and there is, therefore, no ground for the suggestion which 
has been made, that Dr. Falconer erred in not making a distinction between Siwalik and 
Nahun Mammalian fossils. The divisions in the Siwalik strata, founded on lithological 
characters only, I have not noticed, as they do not, as far as we know at present, contain dis¬ 
tinctive groups of Mammalia. 
