Till 1947, when India declared its independence from United Kingdom, the Country hosted several European researchers.
Among them, Guy Ellcock Pilgrim was specialized to describe Indian fossil mammal, and artiodactyls in detail.
In 1936, he pubblished “the fossil Bovidae of India” for the journal Geological survey of India; the manuscript is composed by 356 pages in which he described all the bovids already discovered in the Peninsula, classified in about 80 species.
His work include 16 tables with the raffiguration of significative remains and, that is important, the list of 52 localities where the fossils were found with their geographic position.
Such coordinates were pubblished in 1939, so we assumed they were calcolated using the Osbg36 RS. They have been converted to decimal WGS84 (EPSG: 4326) and then imported into QGIS after the conversion of the geographic reference system.
Most of the sites were discovered at the lowland of Hymalaian chair, at about 300-4800 m a.s.l or in the inner side of the Peninsula, in hilly regions, while the localities at East and West are actually part of Myanmar and Pakistan, below 450 meters of altitude.
Errors related to the lack of precise points and reference system change are inevitable but the results are within 8,50 km for Perim Island and, in general for other localities, less than one kilometer of confidence.
Elena Ghezzo is grateful to Federico Gianoli and Annalisa Ferrari for suggestions.
Software and tools: QGIS http://twcc.fr/ www.nearby.org.uk/coord.cgi Data Sources: 100 pixel/meters resolution USGS DEM Pilgrim G.E. (1939). The fossil Bovidae of India, Geological survey of India vol. XXVI Mem. 1: 1-356
PaleoGeoGraphic 