The little known rookery

The world’s largest known rookery of Oliver Ridley turtles is in Orissa and thousands of  Nature lovers, wildlife enthusiasts, zoologists and researchers flock to the Gahirmatha Beach to witness the turtles mate, nest and hatch.

The beach separates the Bhitarkarnika mangroves from the Bay of Bengal and it forms part of the Gahirmatha Marine reserve. Apart from this beach, Orissa has two other known nesting areas for turtles and they are on the mouth of  Rushikulya and Devi rivers. The Olive ridley sea turtle (Lepidochelys olivacea), also known as the Pacific ridley sea turtle, is primarily found in the Pacific and Indian Ocean and over recent years, Orissa has attained international recognition for this mass congregation of turtles.

However, there are many other places in India where Oliver Ridley turtles mate, nest and return to the Sea. Though they may not be in the numbers seen on the Orissa beach, they are a fascinating sight and what is more many of these areas are relatively unknown.

One such place is in Karnataka but very few people know about it. The Murudeshwar-Gangavali coastline of Uttara Kannada district in Karnataka is known for the breeding of this critically endangered species

The beach along the 75-kilometre long Murudeshwar - Gangavali route on the west coast is ideal for breeding of these turtles between November and February.

However, a few cluster of turtle eggs have been found even between September-October and February-March. Last year, close to 2.86 lakhs eggs were laid by these turtles.

Potential nesting beaches include Jali, Talmakki, Murdeshwar and Baindoor in Bhatkal taluk, Apsarakonda and Manki, Haldipur in Honnavar taluk and Dhareshwar, Baad-Kagal, Gokarn and Gangavali beaches in Kumta taluk.

The Olive Ridley turtle is so named  because of the greenish color of its skin and shell. It is close relative of the Kemp’s Ridley. Both these turtles are the smallest of the sea turtles, which prefer the open ocean. They migrate hundreds or thousands of miles every year, and females congregate once an year in selected beaches where they lag eggs and swim back.

Olive Ridleys have nesting sites in tropical and subtropical beaches all over the world. Generally carnivorous, they feed on snails, crabs, jellyfish and shrimp. They are also known to eat algae and seaweed too. Hatchlings, most of which perish before reaching the safety of the ocean, fall prey to birds, crabs, raccoons, pigs and snakes.

They also provided protection to the eggs in absence of their mother turtles. After laying eggs, the female turtles go back to the deep sea without waiting to see the hatchlings, which generally emerge around 45 days of the nesting. "We have made fencing in around 5-km long area,"

Apart from Orissa and Karnataka, these turtles are also found in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and of course West Bengal.  Do you want to see Olive Ridley turtles nearer home. Then head for Murudeshwar, a small town in Bhatkal taluk. The nearest airport is Mangalore, which is 160 kilometre away. Murudeshwar has a railway station and it is on the Konkan railway route.

Murudeshwar beach has two beautiful temples and the statue of Shiva, which is the second tallest in the world, is awe inspiring. The sea shore is inhabited by crabs and you can see crabs digging holes in the beach sand. Bathing is not allowed in the beach since the sea is inhabited by crabs and scores of people have been bitten by crabs. 

The only Indian to have discovered a structure in a human body

Though Indians have been in the forefront of several branches of science and many discoveries and inventions are ascribed to them, there is one field in science where only a lone Indian figures among the elite.

What makes this feat all the more astonishing and astounding is that he is the only Indian credited with the discovery of  a structure in a human body and this is the field of medical science.

I am not talking about the DNA or RNA or Genes (Dr. Har Gobind Khurana) where Indians have made path breaking discoveries. I have restricted myself to modern medical science and not to earlier discoveries by Indian surgeons and Vaids in Ayurveda and other indigenous fields of medicine.

What should make Bangaloreans feel more proud is that this discoverer was himself a Bangalorean and he was one of the Superintendents of Victoria Hospital, the premier Government hospital in Bangalore.

He is none other than Dr. T. Seshachalam, who was the Superintendent of Victoria Hospital from 1939 to 1949. He discovered an accessory artery to the Appendix which supplies blood to the organ.

He was Professor of Surgery in Bangalore Medical College (BMC)

This artery runs through the mesoappendix. The mesoappendix is the portion of the mesentery (Very roughly it means the membrane that covers the abdominal cavity. It actually means the double layer of Peritoneum that suspends the Jejunum and ileum from the posterior wall of the abdomen) connecting the ileum to the appendix. It may extend to the tip of the appendix. It encloses the appendicular artery and vein, as well as lymphatic vessels, nerves, and often a lymph node

The artery he discovered is a branch of the Iliocolic artery. (The ileocolic artery is the lowest branch arising from the concavity of the superior mesenteric artery). His discovery is important as it established the fact that the artery that pumps blood to the Appendix is an accessory appendicular artery.

Medical science has named this discovery in the field of anatomy as the artery of Seshachalam. To this day, he remains the only Bangalorean and Indian to have an organ in the human body named after him.

Victoria Hospital has a photograph of this man of medicine along with photographs of other Superintendents.

Rajasaurus-The Indian dinosaurus

It was 1981 and two geologists from the Geological Survey of India (GSI) were mapping Rahioli and surrounding areas of Kheda district in Gujarat.

When the geologists, G.N. Dwivedi and D.M. Mohabey, reached a quarry near Rahioli, workers of quarry belonging to a private cement factory showed them some round or circular balls.

The geologists found that the structures were fossiled eggs of dinosaurus.

Many such eggs were unearthed  from a limestone bed near the quarry. Apart from the eggs, they also found several fossiled bones.

(What they did not know was that they had stumbled upon the discovery of an indigenous type of dinosaurus, which was native to the Indian sub-continent only.)

An year later, another geologist from the GSI, Suresh Srivastava, of the paleontology division of Jaipur, collected many fossiled bones of the dinosaurus. He also marked the precise coordinates of the area. This work went on from 1982 to 1984. Ashok Saini, a paleontologist at Panjab University, was also involved in the search for fossiled eggs and bones.

Subsequently, Suresh Srivastava and U B Mathur, under supervision of S. C Pant, cleaned up the fossiled skeletal parts of the dinosauras. Several papers came to be published in national and international journals about these fossils.

In 2001, the American Institute of  Indian Research, New Delhi and the National Geographic Society of USA sponsored further research on these fossils and the fossil sites. Under the project, two US researchers, Paul Sereno and Jeff Wilson, reconstructed the collection of dinosaur bones gathered in 1983 and 1984. The team came to the conclusion that the dino found in Gujarat closely resembled the one found in Madagascar.

Later, fossils of  the same type of dinos were found in Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh. This type of dine came to be named as  Rajasaurus Narmadensis.

The Rajasaurus are abelisaurs and so far it is known to have occurred only in the Indian peninsula. Research so far has revealed that the Rajasaurus was alive when the Indian sub-continent had separated itself from the Gondwana landmass. After separating itself, the Indian sub-continent was moving north.

The Rajasaurus was at least 30 foot or nine metres in length. It was  a horned carnivore that hunted other dinosaurs about 65 million years ago.

The full name of the Indian dino is Rajasauras Narmadensis. While Rajasaurus means princely lizard,  Narmadensis means dinosaur from the Narmada river.

Today, Gujarat boasts of having among the most abundant of dinosaur hatcheries in the world. Geologists say that the presence of dinosaur eggs, bones and skin impressions suggest a widespread presence of dinosaurs.