PU Associate Prof brings laurels

Deepankar Sharda

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 25

Panjab University’s Associate Professor Ashu Khosla from the Department of Geology, along with Dr Spencer G Lucas of New Mexico, US, has brought laurels as results of their extensive study on late cretaceous dinosaur nesting sites of peninsular India have been published in the Springer Nature book (Switzerland AG 2020) entitled “Late Cretaceous Dinosaur Eggs and Eggshells of Peninsular India: Oospecies Diversity and Taphonomical, Palaeoenvironmental, Biostratigraphical and Palaeobiogeographical Inferences”.

Working exclusively for 29 years, his work has received worldwide acknowledgement from palaeontologists, as it covers diverse issues such as evolution, diversity and biogeography of vertebrates (dinosaur eggs, skeletal material, mammals, crocodiles, turtles, fishes, frogs) and microbiota (ostracods, charophytes, gastropods and foraminifera) associated with the Cretaceous fragmentation and drift of the Indian plate.

“We have dedicated this book to Prof Ashok Sahni. It documents analyses of the 65 million-year-old (6.5 crore years) dinosaur nesting sites of the lameta formation at Jabalpur, districts of Dhar and Jhabua, Madhya Pradesh; districts of Kheda and Panchmahal (Gujarat); and the Pisdura, Dongargaon and Pavna sectors in the Chandrapur district of Maharashtra, which are exposed in India along an east-west and central axis,” said Khosla.

He added: “This work was undertaken to provide detailed information concerning dinosaur eggs, eggshell fragments, nests and clutches found in the lameta formation along the east-west and the central Narmada river region of peninsular India. Over the past few decades, great progress has been made in scientifically understanding the micro and ultra structural studies of dinosaur eggs, and these studies have become a significant area of dinosaur research.

The need to follow a parataxonomy classification for Indian dinosaur eggs and eggshell types is very apparent, and this book addresses this aspect in some detail. “Five of the Indian ootaxa belonging to these oofamilies (Megaloolithus jabalpurensis, M megadermus, M cylindricus, Fusioolithus baghensis and F Mohabeyi) have also been reported from the late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) terrestrial deposits of four other continental areas (France, Spain, Argentina and Morocco),” added Khosla.