Borrowing survival hacks from a time before the dinosaurs
GVR Prasad saw his first fossils when he was 14, just outside his village in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh. It was during a field trip conducted by S Subbarao, an associate professor of geology who grew up in the same village and returned to visit every summer.
On this visit, Subbarao took some of the village kids on a trek around a local stone quarry and explained how the rocks there dated back to the time of Gondwanaland, having formed 120 million years earlier.
The fossils he pointed out were from plants, but Prasad would later learn that this was also the age of the dinosaurs. By age 17, he was so fascinated by this ancient world, he decided to graduate in geology.
He is now one of India’s leading palaeontologists, has a PHD in the field and teaches at Delhi University. Since 1982, Prasad has gone on palaeontology field trips every year, to areas such as the Deccan volcanic province in central and western India, the Cauvery basin in southern India, the Pranhita godavari
valley in south-central India and the Narmada valley in west-central India.
“My most exciting find has been a 66-million-year-old fossil of the first cretaceous mammal that lived in the Deccan volcanic province,” says Prasad, now 62.
Palaeontologists have a tough job, though, he says. Interior regions are still difficult to access. Villagers are often suspicious of city folk, fearing that the outsiders want to take away their land. In areas like central and south-central India, there’s political and social unrest.
Right now, his work is close to home, at a dig site in Adilabad, Telangana. Prasad and his team are trying to piece together a puzzle of global proportions. “According to earlier findings, Gondwana or the current landmasses of Antarctica, South America, India and Africa, should have hosted similar fauna as they were once the single supercontinent,” Prasad says. “But we’ve found fossils of mammal groups from the Jurassic age (160 million years ago) in India that have closely related forms in Europe, North America and Asia, which were part of the supercontinent Laurasia. We are trying to find out the reason behind this.”
Discovering how this happened could help scientists understand how ecosystems can change and life persist amid changing climate. “Earth has had several ice ages and mass extinctions. Life has always returned, even if in a different shape and form. By studying fossils we can learn more about how life has evolved in the past to adapt to changing environments.”
At least once a year, Prasad also returns to his village. There isn’t anyone there today who is as riveted by the tales of Gondwanaland as he was as a boy.
“I suppose the work I leave behind from my studies of India in the Mesozoic era will be my legacy,” he says. “As well as the dedicated students, who will form a much-required future workforce for the country’s dwindling palaeontological community.”