"Pabwehshi Pakistanensis" 65m years old crocodile

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65m years old crocodile fossils recovered

Updated on 2002-04-04 13:11:50

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QUETTA, April 04 (PNS): In a major discovery, a team of Geological

Survey of Pakistan (GSP) has discovered 65 million years old fossils

of Crocodile in Vitakri area, some 310 km off here, GSP officials

confided to PNS here on Wednesday.

 

The specimen collected to date includes a well-preserved rostrum of

a new genus and species named as "Pabwehshi Pakistanensis". The

fossils are an anterior portion of left and right mandibular rostrum

preserving the upper and lower teeth in place, said Asif Rana,

Curator, Museum of Historical Geology of GSP to this correspondent.

 

Disclosing the new discovery of crocodile fossils, Asif Rana said

the fossil horizon occurs in the upper part of the Pab formation and

provides the first diagnostic remains of Cretaceous Crocodyliform

from the Indian subcontinent.

 

He said the fossils were believed to be 65 to 70 million years old

and provide important information for assessing bio-geographic

history of the region. He disclosed that the Pabwehshi Pakistanensis

was closely related to a group previously known only from Argentina.

 

This species "Baurusuchidae" has not yet been discovered on other

Gondawana land mass. He elaborated the plate tectonics theory that

Indo-Pak was initially interlocked with the Gondawana land mass of

Africa, Antarctica, Australia and Madagascar early in the Mesozoic

era, some 200 million years ago. It drifted northward during the

Cretaceous period to collide with Laurasian land mass during the

Cenozoic era. This collision resulted in the emergence of Himalaya-

Karakorum-Hindu Kush mountain ranges. The new fossil discovery is

relevant in the reconstruction of the paleo-geographic history of

the Indo-Pak subcontinent, he said.

 

He said this discovery strengthens the hypothesis that a land

connection might have existed between Indo-Pakistan sub-continental

and South American plates. About the discoveries of GSP, Asif Rana

said that Pakistani geologists had recently unearthed 2,700

fossilised bones of a new slender limbed Titanosaurus dinosaur from

the same locality in the same formation of sedimentary rocks.

 

The GSP researchers have also discovered a 47 million years old

walking whale from Balochistan. The fossils of the largest land

mammal "Baluchitherium" discovered by GSP's palaeontologists in 1985

from Dera Bugti are also on display in the GSP's Museum of

Historical Geology at Quetta, he said. He said that these

discoveries of dinosaurs, walking whale and super crocodile had

provided a wonderful opportunity for people of all ages to learn

about the past.