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Long before the subcontinent collided with Asia to form the Himalayas, the landmass that would become India was drifting northward through ancient oceans, and it carried dinosaurs with it. Fossils discovered across the Lameta Formation in Gujarat, the Pranhita-Godavari basin, and the Thar Desert reveal extraordinary species, from the horned carnivore Rajasaurus narmadensis to Tharosaurus indicus, the oldest diplodocoid ever found, which has led scientists to argue that giant long-necked sauropods may have originated right here. Despite this remarkable fossil record, India's palaeontology remains chronically underfunded, a legacy of colonial neglect and post-independence scientific priorities that have left much of this deep history unexcavated and understudied.
With Netflix's latest documentary series, The Dinosaurs, bringing the giants of prehistory back into the spotlight, it is hard not to be enchanted with these creatures that once ruled the earth. Modern humans have existed for about 300,000 years, a mere 0.2% of the 165–180 million years dinosaurs roamed the planet. Wrap your head around that!
So who were the dinosaurs that claimed this land we today call India and South Asia long before it had a name, long before it had even arrived where it is today?
Around 180 million years ago, the supercontinent Gondwana began to fracture. Part of the fracturing mass, India and Madagascar were physically joined, drifting together through the Jurassic and into the Cretaceous era, before separating around 88 million years ago, with India accelerating northward and Madagascar becoming the isolated island it is today. The consequences of that shared past show up clearly in the fossil record.
India's fossil record spans the entire Mesozoic, the Age of the Dinosaurs, consisting of the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods. The carnivorous abelisaurid family of dinosaurs appear on both landmasses. Not only dinosaur fossils but even crocodilians and frogs show related lineages on opposite sides of what is now the Indian Ocean, divided by the continental drift.
Dinosaur fossils were first discovered in India in 1828, when Captain William Sleeman encountered giant bones near Jabalpur in one of the earliest dinosaur finds in Asia. By 1877, Richard Lydekker had formally described Titanosaurus, making it India's first named genus. Here are five of the most significant dinosaurs found on Indian soil.
The crown jewel of Indian palaeontology, Rajasaurus narmadensis or the "regal lizard from the Narmada", was a muscular carnivore, measuring roughly 6.6 to 9 metres in length, with a distinctive single horn on its skull and short forelimbs. Fossils were excavated from Gujarat's Lameta Formation in the 1980s but only formally named in 2003. Its closest relative is Madagascar's Majungasaurus showind the ancient India-Madagascar connection. Palaeontologist Ashok Sahni was the one who co-led the reconstruction of Rajasaurus from the Narmada region.
Named in honour of Rabindranath Tagore to mark his birth centenary, Barapasaurus tagorei, "big-legged lizard" in Hindi and Greek, was an early Jurassic dinosaur reaching roughly 18 metres and 14 tonnes. Around 300 bones from at least six individuals were found together in the Pranhita-Godavari basin, alongside fossilised tree trunks. It is one of the most complete early sauropod skeletons in Asia, every bone except the skull accounted for.
Jainosaurus septentrionalis was named after palaeontologist Sohan Lal Jain, who published detailed work on the specimen in the Annals of the Carnegie Museum in 1982. It measured roughly 18 metres, living in what is now Madhya Pradesh around 68 million years ago. In a curious irony, Jain later argued the genus was the same as Titanosaurus, arguing against his own claim to fame, though a 2009 reassessment confirmed it as fully valid.
The Thar Desert today is a scorching expanse in Rajasthan, but 167 million years ago, it was a tropical shoreline along the Tethys Ocean. It was here that an all-Indian research team from IIT and the Geological Survey of India discovered Tharosaurus indicus, named for the Thar Desert and its country of origin. It is the oldest known diplodocoid, a family of enormous, long-necked plant-eaters ever found globally, predating previously known Chinese specimens by at least two million years. This has led the research team to argue that sauropods may have originated in India before dispersing to other parts of the world.
Isisaurus colberti was a titanosaur from the Lameta Formation of central India, named after the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) in Kolkata where much of the specimen was studied. It was a large, long-necked herbivore of the Late Cretaceous, living in the same ecosystem as Rajasaurus, which likely preyed upon it.
India's dinosaur story does not only have big species. In 2010, researchers formally described Sanajeh indicus, a 3.5-metre Late Cretaceous snake found fossilised in the Lameta Formation.
Coiled around a sauropod egg and adjacent to the skeleton of a 50-centimetre hatchling, the fossil suggests that snakes were nest-plundering predators at dinosaur hatching sites.
Despite this remarkable fossil record, India's palaeontology remains chronically underfunded. What are the reasons for the underfunding and neglect of Indian palaeontology? Fossils have even been prey to theft and raiding. Some of the blame lies with the colonial science infrastructure, which prioritised extraction over preservation, while post-independence, funding for palaeontology has remained chronically thin. India's fossil wealth, stretching from the Jurassic beds of Rajasthan to the Cretaceous layers of the Deccan, has barely begun to be systematically excavated.
