Dinosaur site fossilises as experts stay away

Dinosaur site fossilises as experts stay away
D V MAHESHWARI

BHUJ, JAN 19: A year after a team of geologists from the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) found a dinosaur graveyard in the Kunvarbet area in the Great Rann of Kutch, scientific study of the site and fossilised bones found there is yet to begin.

The ONGC team, which was on an oil exploration mission, had discovered the site and found a large number of dinosaur bones in February last year. Professor Ashok Sahni, a renowned expert, who later visited the site, had described it as ``a wholly new dinosaurian skeletal graveyard''.

Since then, no Indian team has visited the site for conducting a study. Some German experts did try to visit the area, but were not allowed to do so by the Border Security Force (BSF) because the site falls in a prohibited zone. Last week, ONGC experts again visited the site and collected specimens. The team leader and general manager (exploration) at ONGC, S K Patra, said:

``Though we are primarily oil explorers, we had a special three-day expedition to the site last weekand we collected as many as 80 pieces. Hundreds more are strewn on the surface of two small hillocks, adjacent to the one from where we had collected more than a dozen vertebrae during our first visit on February 25 last year''.

The bones appear to be jaws, limbs and feet of pre-historic huge reptiles which ruled the earth from the Triassic period (226 million years ago) to the end of the Cretaceous period (65 million years ago), Patra said, adding that the BSF participated in the expedition and the dinosaur bones had been left with them.

According to Patra, the fossils were 178 million years old, the oldest found in the border district. Earlier, about five years ago, eggs belonging to the Cretaceous age dinosaurs were found at Anjar in eastern Kutch, about 40 kilometres from here. Patra believes the site needs immediate excavation at the two hillocks to recover fossils which may be embedded in the rocks.

His organisation had informed the Geological Survey of India immediately after their team fromMumbai's Regional Geology Laboratory, consisting of geologists K Satyanarayana, D K Dasgupta, Alok Dave and K K Das, stumbled upon the bones 11 months back.

Harish Kumar, Commandant of the BSF battalion posted here, said the fossils had been numbered and kept in safe custody at the local Border Security Forces headquarters.