The IIT- Institute Scientists Roorkee and Geological survey of India are found out the oldest fossils of long-necked, plant eating dicraeosaurid dinosaurs in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan. An international journal published this study by publishers of nature in "Scientific Reports". This was 167 million years ago old which belongs to a new species unknown to scientist.
Former director of Birbal Sahani Institute Palaeosciences (BSIP), Lucknow, Sunil Bajpai, who is now the chair professor of vertebrate paleontology in department of Earth Science. IIT-Roorkee and his IITian colleague Debajit Datta, a national post-doctoral fellow, carried out this detailed study of the fossil.
"A systematic fossil exploration and excavation program initiated by GSI in 2018 in the Middle Jurassic (Rs 167 Ma) rocks in the Jaisalmer region of Rajasthan, has led to this discovery. The fossils were collected by the GSI officers Krishna Kumar, Pragya Pandey and Triparna Ghosh under the supervision of Debasis Bhattacharya and then we studied it for around five years," said former BSIP director Sunil Bajpai
According to scientists, fossil of dicraeosaurid dinosaurs found in India in Jaisalmer region. Professor Bajpai said that the new Indian dinosaurs is part of a long lineage that originated in India and underwent rapid dispersal across the rest of the world.
Debajit Datta from IIT-Roorkee said," The study comes up as an alternative to previous theories on a sauropods which suggested that the oldest dicraeosauri was from Chaina. About 166-164 million years old and that the ancestors of diplodocids and neosauropods were only present in Asia or the Americas."