Abstract
LONDON. Geological Society, May 29.—K. S. Sandford: The Pliocene and Pleistocene deposits of Wadi Qena and of the Nile Valley between Luxor and Assiut (Qau). Wadi Qena is a broad and deep dry valley which joins the Nile from the north at Qena, about 40 miles north of Luxor. The oldest beds visible within the walls of the valley system are of Pliocene age, deposited in gulf of the Mediterranean. This had been cut by river erosion during the elevation of the Egyptian plateaux in Miocene and (in the south) partly in Oligocene times, and it was then flooded to a height of at least 550 feet above present sea-level. A non-fossiliferous series of strata was deposited in it. Great thicknesses of travertine are locally present in the series. Re-elevation carried the flooded valley system back to fluviatile conditions in Plio-Pleistocene times, accompanied by the irruption of enormous quantities of detritus from the Red Sea Hills. In Pleistocene times an ordered succession of river terraces was laid down in the Nile valley and in all the major wadis. Thereafter (in Upper Palæolithic times) desert conditions began to assert themselves, and the Nile alone survived. At about the same time the Nile carved a deep channel and re-excavated the deeper parts of the Pliocene-filled Miocene gorge. The process of filling this up still continues.
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Societies and Academies. Nature 124, 76–79 (1929). https://doi.org/10.1038/124076b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/124076b0