Petrified fossil found in Sikkim
BY SHITAL PRADHAN
A few months back, when a fossil of blue-green algae was discovered on one of the rocks at Mamley, Namchi, I was one of the few who was very excited to take notice of the news. For me, I had found a friend for my petrified plant fossil.
Has anyone ever realized the potential of finding possible fossil materials in Sikkim? The answer would certainly be a tricky one. It was during my college days at Tadong, I asked one of my lecturers about the chances of finding fossils in Sikkim, and the prompt reply was "It's a silly question." He added that Sikkim is a young mountain range and there is no possibility of finding any such materials, both in plants and animals. He made his fullest assumption, but that did not affect my fanatical thoughts over my query.
My wildest imagination would have me wondering what happened to the life forms beneath the so-called Tethys, from which the Himalayan mountains evolved, or what those vigorously, wildly grown tree ferns were doing in our Sikkim. Since elementary school, I've let my imagination run wild with those tree ferns, believing that in the distant past, these valleys may have been home to giant and fearsome animals such as dinosaurs and others. Now that I have a graduate degree in botany with honours, I'm not sure if I was crazy for having those wild thoughts.
Call it a coincidence, but within a couple of months of my interaction with my lecturer, I came across a fossil-like piece of jagged stone along the woods of Shantinagar in Singtam while going about my normal job of maintaining our water supply. That piece of stone bore the imprint of a monocot plant, complete with parallel venation and a rachis.(Obviously, a layperson's question about how I know these botanical terms arises; all thanks to my Botany lecturers at Sikkim Government College who assisted me in identifying with botanical terms I had studied in my course studies and on laboratory practices during my stay as a Botany Honours student).
The impression on the left side was slightly cut compared to the right side, where it fell along the edge. At first sight, the fossil impression seems to be of a maize leaf, according to my wild imagination. The other additional interesting features of the stone were the presence of a faintly red round mark on the bottom connecting with the base of the monocot fossil and another leaf-like arrangement on the right side of it.
The next morning, I went to see the same lecturer at college, who was astounded by my discovery, but nothing productive could happen as I had hoped. I was advised to meet the officers at the Botanical Survey of India at Zero Point. The same afternoon, I stopped by BSI and met an officer who, to my surprise, said he was not interested in fossil materials. Yet I took out my findings and showed him, he added that there was no department for fossil study in Sikkim, so he told me to see anyone at the Geological Survey of India in Deorali.
I made my way through the doors of GSI; an officer out there was kind enough to look at my materials and told me that GSI is only concerned with studying rocks, and even showed me a couple of samples of fossils of earlier under-water organisms recovered in places like West Sikkim and South Sikkim. I could still recall the shell-like imprints and, of course, that small starfish-like mark on a grey piece of stone. He asked me to send my findings to Guwahati, but he also feared that the materials might not reach me later on. Notable information I received from him then was about a person from the North East who was doing some sort of plant fossil study in Sikkim at the time.
The aforementioned incident occurred in 2002, and that fossil-like material has yet to make its presence felt over the last few years. Who knows, it could be a watershed moment in the occurrence of Sikkim's ancient world of flora. Last year (2007), I had a chance to exchange words with the members of the Indian Museumology Association out in Gangtok during a three-day seminar on archaeology and museology. With archaeologists visiting from different states of India, I came across a lady who was concerned about my possessed stone and added that it was a petrified fossil and wanted to congratulate me on my findings. That was more than enough for me to put a smile on my face. Finally, over the years, I have found a name for it: a petrified fossil.
What is more interesting about my prized possession is the fact that the impression on the stone more often gives me a sense of a leaf from a maize plant. I might be wrong in my opinion, but my inner fantasy speaks of a different profundity. It really has grown my eagerness to find out more about this fossil impression that I have in my collection. I had surfed through the pages of the internet about the findings of maize fossils, and in one of its divergent segments, my joy had comparisons beyond its understanding.
I here want to talk about an exceptional maize fossil found in the pockets of North Eastern Himalayan regions known as "Sikkim Primitive." The Sikkim Primitive, better known as SP to the world of crop plant evolutionists and to the hills simply as "murali makai," had caught interest worldwide because it had a remarkable resemblance to pre-historic wild maize. To write more about this particular murali maize variety is beyond my limited knowledge, thus I concentrate more on its origin only. I would like to take a quote from J.R. Subba's Agriculture in the Hills of Sikkim, where Subba writes, "The existence of murali maize in Sikkim, Bhutan and the North Eastern states which resemble the primitive hypothetical maize gave another thought to the origin of maize. At present, it is believed that Sikkim and other North-Eastern states are the secondary centres of origin for maize."
Well, I do not want to dream big, the matter that is more concerning to me is the fact that my findings look similar to the maize leaf. I repeat, it appears similar, so it piqued my interest.
It is a controversial speculation, and there have been many heated debates on the topic of the similarities between SP and Palomero Toluqueno, an ancient indigenous maize race of Mexico. What's more fascinating is the fact that it is believed that the maize plant was first brought to the attention of Columbus in North America in 1492, and the presence of Sikkim Primitive could well alter the course of different subjects in world history. It would shed light on the widely held belief that the natives of North America had much stronger ties with their Asian counterparts than previously assumed, and it would lend credence to the notion that they arrived in the Indian subcontinent before the Portuguese.
It was one of the biggest ironies that Sikkim is regarded as the secondary origin of maize when this place has been known as "the Valley of Rice" for ages. Isn't fascinating?
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