FOUND, ONLY TO BE LOST AGAIN

Finding a fossil is a momentous event. But what happens after this is just as important; otherwise, what is found may be lost, stolen, or worse, never allowed to tell its story. India’s record in this regard is dismal. “The Geological Survey of India is the custodian of a meteor that lands on Indian soil, but it has no powers to protect a fossil ,” says Dhananjay Mohabey, former GSI official. Specimens returned from foreign museums are missing or misplaced, often for decades.

Most of India’s fossil parks are little more than fenced-in forests. A number of fossil museums are state- and panchayat-run.

In 2014, three dinosaur eggs in the Ashmadha fossil museum in Dhar, MP, were stolen. In Tamil Nadu, a bone that may have been from the largest dinosaur ever to have lived, was washed away by rain in the 1980s simply because our scientists left it where it had surfaced, jutting out of a rock.

For our dinos, it’s like a second extinction.

VIJAYANAND GUPTA/HT Dinosaur eggs from this cache discovered near Indore in MP were stolen from a local museum in 2014.