The fronds of extinction

This plant is as old as the Dinosaurs. A rare plant, it has medicinal properties and in Karnataka it is mainly found in the forests in and around Melkote in Mandy district.

Unfortunately, the plant is on the verge of extinction and in the next few years it may go the Dinosaurs way if remedial measures are not taken immediately to save this plant.

The plant is being recklessly being exploited  for commercial purposes and this is the main reason for it to be put on the endangered list.

The plants, apart from its medicinal properties, is used as an attractive background for floral arrangements. The cut flower trade demand in Bangalore is another reason for the plant to start losing out. The fronds are extensively used during decoration of bouquets.

The major markets for the fronds are Mumbai and Bangalore. Every day, several lorry loads are transported to these cities by the locals and the price varies from Rs. 5 to Rs. 10 for each frond.

Apart from Melkote, botanists have recently come across a very small patch of this plant in Bellary district. The plant can come up even in semi-arid conditions and even in rough soils or the lack of it. Yet, this hardy plant is almost on the verge of entering into history books.  

The plants belong to one of the most ancient species in the country and it is classified as Cycas Circinalis. It is not found anywhere else in the State barring the Narayandurga forests in the Melkote wildlife reserve.

Botanists say that the humid climatic condition of Melkote and the rocky terrain of the region interspread with shrubs and trees, are well-suited for its growth.
Cycases belong to the group of Gymnosperms. What sets them apart is that the male and female plants are separate and they are rather slow growing.

There are two species of this plant in South India- Cycas Cercinalis and Cycas Revoluta. The former is a native, while the latter is introduced species.

It is also called Dinosaur Foot Tree as it resembles a Dinosaur’s foot. Several species of butterflies are dependent on this plant as it helps in pollination.
In India, three species of the Cycas Circinalis family are found in different states. While one species is found in Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh, the other is found in parts of Orissa and another species in found in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry. However, Circinalis is confined only to Narayandurga forests in Karnataka.
The Yadavagiri Hills of Melkote are the last rocky ridges of the Sahayadri ranges and they comprise some of the oldest rock formations on the Earth.

The hill is the last home to the rare plant. Botanists say that at least 50 per cent of the habitat is estimated to have been lost in the past 60 years. A few plants have also been noticed in the Chamundi Hills in Mysore.

There is  an urgent need to protect the plant as it takes several years to grow and sexual reproduction takes place after 10 years of exclusive vegetative growth.

The Forest Department has decided to set up various “daivavanas” which will go by the names like Dharmikavana, Smrithivana, Navagrahavana and Saptarishivana. The department has decided to re-plant it on  200 hectares in and around Melkote, where the department had identified over 200 rare and endangered floral species, some of which date back to the pre-historic times.
Apart from the Cycas Circinalis, the department also wants to preserve other endangered species like Gardenia Gummifera and the commonly used medicinal plant Boswellia Sarreta.

The place where you can hold a Dinosaurus egg in your hand

This is one of the biggest Dinosaurus hatcheries in the world. This is also the place where you can find evidences of the life and death of the dinosaurus.

Geologists and palentologists believe that at least thirteen species of dinosaurus lived in the area. No wonder, more than 10,000 eggs of dinosaurus have been  discovered here and more and more are being unearthed.

As of now, this place is labeled the third largest hatchery in the world. What is more this perhaps is the only place in the world where you can hold in your hand a dinosaurus egg and other parts of the animal dating back to 65 million years.

Unfortunately, this site is almost unknown outside the scientific community. Though its is located a little more than an hour’s drive from Ahmedabad,  it is still to gain popularity among the lakhs of tourists visiting Ahmedabad and Gujarat.

This is the village or rather small town of Balasinor in Gujarat. The scientific community hails it as home to the one of the largest dinosaur fossils sites in the world. 

This is the very place which can be termed as a nesting ground for the Dino. It would be tempting though to call it a prehistoric burial ground for Dinos because of the presence of the large number of Dino fossils and eggs.

In 2003, palentologists discovered a species of Tyrannosaurus Rex and called it Rajasaurus narmandensis.

All these fossils are preserved in a 72-acre area called Jurassic Park of India. One of the most stunning exhibits is the fossilised remains of a snake that dined on dinosaur eggs.

This 67 million-year-old skeleton was found in a dinosaur nest on the vast grounds of Balasinor.

The 3.5 metre long fossilised snake fed on the hatchlings of sauropods. It was found wrapped around a baby Titanosaur. This is believed to be the first evidence of feeding behaviour in a fossilised primitive snake.

Researchers believe that the surreal scene depicts the snake attacking a hatchling that was just emerging from the egg. It was at precisely this time that a huge storm or any other natural calamity wiped out the Dinos and it also froze this scene for posterity. The site is a geologist’s paradise.

You can see part of a Dino limb fossiled in a rock, remains of skin, bones, fossilised egg rings and even a real dinosaur egg fossil.

You can also feel and touch a 65 million year old egg fossil.

Aaliya Sultana Babi, the former princess of Balasinor,  conducts tours to the dino sites. Her interest in preserving and protecting the site has given her a new name-the Dinosaur Princess. She is one of the very few English-speaking guides.

Balasinor, also called as Vadasinor, is in Kheda district. It was a small princely state ruled by the Babi or Yusufzai Pathans. The kingdom came into existence in 1785.

Balasinor is about one and a half hours drive from Ahmedabad. The distance is 107 kilometres. Tourists can stay in the Garden Palace, a heritage hotel property run by the Babi rulers of Balasinor. You can also stay in Camp Dinosaur tents on site.

(This is the final part of the earlier article in the blog called –The Indian Dino)

The Dino that was found in a cupboard

It was believed to have been lost for more than a century. Though several searches had been launched, none seemed to know how and when it went missing. Over the years, it not only engaged national but international attention.

It took a team of experts not only from India but also from the United States to track down the missing object. And do you where it was found. In the very office whose property it was.

This priceless piece was one of the most important fossil in India of all times. It was the fossil of India’s first  recorded dinosaur.

has been rediscovered in Kolkata, according to a top scientific journal.

God only knows the amount of money spent on the search for

India’s first Dino that went missing more than 135 years ago. The search for the elusive Dino went on for ten years.

It took a team of people from the Geological Survey of India (GSI) and the University of Michigan  to discover the Dino is boxes that had remained unopened for several decades in the GSI headquarters in Kolkata.

The Dino was the fossil of  Titanosaurus Indicus, or the Indian Tital reptile. The fossil was originally discovered by Lieutenant –Colonel W H Sleeman of the British Army from Bara Simla and Chotta Simla near Jabalpur now in Madhya Pradesh in 1828  (The areas from where the fossils were first discovered are also called as the Deccan Traps).

He had led an expedition of cartographers and geologists to map the area. However, this specimen was formally described as Taitanosaurus Indica by Richard Lydekker 50 years later - in 1877. It went missing after 1877 once its plaster cast was sent to the Museum of Natural History Museum in London.

Lydekker was believed to be the last scientist to have handled the specimen.

The fossil parts discovered in the cupboard were the caudal vertebra (part of the tail) of Titanosaurus indicus, bones from another species, Titanosaurus blanfordi and other Triassic vertebrates which were all presumed missing. All these fossil fragments are part of  the Lydekker Collection.

During the time of the discovery of these fossils, only 115 dinosaur species or less than 10 percent of the 1,401 species known by 2004 had been identified and the Indian Dino was important as it could provide a valuable link to the history of palentology.

Well. Let me come back to the history of the missing Dino. Sleeman sent two fossil bones to G. G. Spilsbury, a civil surgeon, who himself collected a third bone from the same area. In 1832,

Spilsbury sent all three specimens to Calcutta antiquarian, James Prinsep. Later in 1862, these fossils handed over to Thomas

Oldham, the first Director of the Geological Survey of India. It was the Surgeon- botanist Hugh Falconer, co-discoverer of the Siwalik vertebrates , who first gave a description of  the two bones, which he classified as caudal vertebrae.

When the fossils were examined by Lyddeker, he realized that it was a new genre and he gave it the current name. It went missing shortly thereafter though a cast of the specimen was exhibited at the Museum of Natural History in London.

Though the original Dino was believed to have been lost, in the early 1900s, many dinosaur fossils were discovered around the original site of Jabalpur by scientists such as Charles Metley and Durgasankar Bhattacharji.

By the way, this was not the only Dino fossil that went missing. There have been several others, including large and small specimens of sauropod and theropod Dinosaurs.

The three-member Indo-US team found the Dino bones in the curatorial division of the GSI office.  The discovery has had an important effect on paleontology as researchers do not need to depend on casts provided by US and UK museums to work on. The Dino that was rediscovered will help researchers plug an important gap in the paleontological period in India.

What is more important is that the bones recovered from the vast fossil vertebrate and invertebrate collection are intact.

The discovery of the Dino fossil in 2012 was published in a journal called Current Science brought out by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore.