The Pleistocene Fauna and Flora of Kharga Oasis, Egypt

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Abstract
I. Introduction T he life of an isolated area, be it island or oasis, has a special interest of its own, and this is no less true of the past than the present. Indeed, in the case of Kharga Oasis, the interest is heightened by the fact that this region is now naturally a desert: where life once flourished there is now no sign of shell or shrub. What kind of fauna and flora lived in the depression in Pleistocene times, whence and by what means did it come, what were its reactions to the existing conditions, and why did it go? The facts that have been accumulated in three seasons' work (1930–1933) will be marshalled in the following paper in an attempt to answer these questions, but a short sketch of the oasis and its later history must first be given to make the faunal discussions intelligible; a fuller account is in my paper in the Geological Magazine for 1932 (vol. lxix, p. 386). Kharga Oasis is an elongated depression some 185 kilometres from north to south by 80 broad, lying between latitudes 24° and 26° north. It is sunk from 300 to 400 metres below the general level of the Libyan plateau, which separates it from the Nile by 140 kilometres of waterless limestone. The eastern and northern boundaries are sharply defined by steep scarps capped by Eocene or Cretaceous limestone. The later fossiliferous deposits occur mainly along the eastern scarp and consist of gravels, silts, and tufas, mostly

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