The Asiatic lion used to occur in Arabia, Palestine, Mesopotamia and Baluchistan. In South Caucasia (present day Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan), it was known since the Holocene, and became extinct in the 10th century. Until the middle of the 19th century, it survived in regions adjoining Mesopotamia and Syria, and was still sighted in the upper reaches of the Euphrates River in the early 1870s. By the late 19th century, the Asiatic lion had become extinct in Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The last known lion in Iraq was killed on the lower Tigris in 1918.