Subject:  Indian geologists claims find of 70-million-old dinosaur fossils
GUWAHATI, India, March 6 (AFP) -
Indian geologists on a routine mission have stumbled upon dinosaur fossiles
in the northeastern state of Meghalaya they say date back to 70 million
years, officials said Monday.
The team from the state-run Geological Survey of India (GSI) said they came
across the fossils in a village some 165 kilometers (102 miles) from state
capital of Shillong while on a trip to explore petroleum reserves.
The geologists identified the village as Dirang and said it was located in
the rugged West Khasi Hills district of the remote Indian state, bordering
Bangladesh.
"The dinosaur bones were discovered from the coarse-grained sand stones ...
in the West Khasi Hills and laboratory tests confirmed the fossils were
about 70 million years old," GSI deputy director B. P. Bhattacharyya said.
The discovery of the fossils, if correct, is the first find of a large
prehistoric creature such as a dinosaur in eastern India.
U K Mishra, a paleontologist, said the rare find appear to be plausible.
"The entire northeastern region (of India) has abundant fossils dating back
to some 60 to 65 million years. It could be possible that parts of the
region was under sea," Mishra said.
The GSI had earlier claimed discovery of remains of smaller sea creatures as
old as 65 million years from other parts of Meghalaya.
The organisation has proposed setting up of a fossil park to preserve the
remains and traces of creatures dating back to the late Cretaceous period,
just before the dinosaurs became extinct.
Experts say Meghalaya is one of the few areas in the world where sedimentary
layers from earlier time periods have been scraped off by nature, exposing a
rich cache of fossils and even complete dinosaur skeletons.
In the last three decades, Indian experts have claimed to have found a
variety of plant and marine fossils from the other northeastern states of
Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Nagaland.

Questions or Comments
Copyright © 2000 AFP. All rights reserved. All information displayed in this
section (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual
property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence you may not
copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way
commercially exploit any of the contents of this section without the prior
written consent of Agence France-Presses.

Copyright © 1994-2000 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.