Why India needs a museum for its fossils - Frontline
1 year, 7 months ago

Why India needs a museum for its fossils - Frontline

The Hindu  

Published : May 18, 2023 11:00 IST - 6 MINS READ For anyone interested in the history of life on the planet, India is a uniquely fascinating natural experiment. “So a fossil you find in India today might be the remains of a life form that lived at some point close to Antarctica,” said Devapriya Chattopadhyay, a palaeobiologist at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Pune. Deep-time biodiversity When I met Chattopadhyay in 2017, I learnt how scientists like her collect fossils from geologically rich regions such as Kutch in Gujarat and study them to reconstruct a picture of the ancient earth, what is called “deep-time biodiversity”. “India loses ancient fossils every time a field site is destroyed and every time a palaeontologist retires.” India is one of the countries under-represented in the paleobiology database. We do not have a national repository, remember?” The lack of a repository is why India loses large numbers of ancient fossils every time a field site is destroyed and every time a palaeontologist retires.

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History of this topic

Why India Needs Museums of National Integration
11 months, 3 weeks ago

Why India Needs Museums of National Integration

News 18  

Standing before the ruins of Hampi, the seat of the erstwhile Vijayanagara Empire, novelist VS Naipaul had an epiphanic moment about the lost glory of ancient Indian civilisation. In the ruins of Hampi, Naipaul could feel first-hand the glories and the pains of an ancient civilisation, even if that place and episodes were far removed from his personal life history. …

Examining the issue of repatriation of cultural artefacts
2 years ago

Examining the issue of repatriation of cultural artefacts

The Hindu  

Published : Dec 14, 2022 18:00 IST The repatriation of objects to source countries seems to be increasing and with that comes the expectation that museums in the source countries will conserve and display such objects in ways that are better—better by the public, with better ethics, and better contextualised. “Personnel have to be able to read the thousand words …

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