ABSTRACT
The fossil mammals of Africa were virtually unknown until the latter half of the nineteenth century when a number of French scientists, notably Thomas and Pomel, began to describe material from the northwest African coastal region. Although Pleistocene fossil mammals have been recorded from many places in Africa, very few areas have furnished reasonable assemblages. West Africa is singularly blank. In Egypt and the Sudan there are a few minor fossil localities but only two have provided significant collections. In the whole vast continent, there are thus only three major regions in which the Pleistocene mammals are reasonably well known and each of these regions possesses today an ecological environment which is quite distinctive. In North Africa the best studied area is that known to the Arabs as the Maghreb, which constitutes the Atlas area of the northwest and the associated coastal strip, all with a rainfall above 8 inches a year.
