))
IT’S A DEER, IT’S A CROCODILE, IT’S A...
Manage episode 263442302 series 2692464
Konten disediakan oleh Desi Stones and Bones and Desi Stones. Semua konten podcast termasuk episode, grafik, dan deskripsi podcast diunggah dan disediakan langsung oleh Desi Stones and Bones and Desi Stones atau mitra platform podcast mereka. Jika Anda yakin seseorang menggunakan karya berhak cipta Anda tanpa izin, Anda dapat mengikuti proses yang diuraikan di sini https://id.player.fm/legal.
My train lumbered into Lucknow, a cultural whirlpool in North India, famous for its silken kebabs, exquisite embroidery and soulful poetry.
But I was here for something even more compelling. My trip was stoked by half-a-century-old discoveries in India — finds that deemed the subcontinent as the ground zero of a fascinating mammalian evolution.
I was at the home of 78-year-old Ashok Sahni, the sensei of Indian palaeontology.
“This was in the 1970s,” said Ashok Sahni. “There had been reports that there were large skulls but nobody in India, in fact, had identified them. One of my students — he was a young guy then — went to Kutch and he came up with several fossils.”
Vijay Prakash Mishra is the student Ashok was talking about. He’s now in his sixties. But four decades ago at the age of 21, Vijay Prakash started scouring the desiccated Kutch region in western India.
This white, salt-crusted desert was once a shallow sea, rife with plankton and fish.
“So, naturally we expected marine vertebrates -- crocodiles,” said Vijay Prakash Mishra. “But we didn’t think we would find certain things that were not known from India.”
8 episode
Bagikan
