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International Webinar held on the evolution and birth of the Himalayas

YS RANA | January 24, 2022 03:01 AM

CHANDIGARH: First International Webinar on understanding the evolution and birth of Himalayas was organised by Dr Ritesh Arya President of Tethys Fossil Museum and Research Center, Dhangiari of district Solan in Himachal Pradesh and Co founder IndianGeoparks.on Saturday.

Welcoming Peter Molnar, geologists and scientists from India and different parts of the world attending Webinar organised by members of Tethys Fossil Museum and Research centre. Dr Arya briefed the delegates about the Tethys Fossil Museum and Research center.

Geologically museum is located on the debris concealing the Dagshai -Subathu boundary which signifies closure of Tethys sea and evolution of terrestrial ecosystem Museum is built from 20 million year rocks of Kasalli Sandstone beautiful chiseled to give museum as aesthetic look

Dr Arya further said that water to the centre was taken from a borewell drilled into 40 million years old white quartzite sand stone which was marker bed extending from Pakistan to Burma in the east.

Tethys Museum will display diverse well Preserved fossils of Stromatolites Edia Cara , Trilobites, Molluscs, Ammonites etc from Spiti valley;fishes, whales Sharks, oysters molluscan foraminera from Subathu and Leh; plant remains consisting of logs of trees, leaves, flowers, roots etc from Kasauli and Dharamsala, and mammals from Shiwaliks.

These all are signifying gradual evolution of life on this planet and all are part of the museum repository. So anyone visiting the museum will have a glimpse of how different fossils collected from different geological formations across the Himalayas can help to rebuilt the entire paleohistory of the various events which led to the evolution and Birth of The Himalayas.

Tethys as we all know was a ocean once upon a time separating India from Tibet / Eurasia. As the Indian plate moved northward the Tethys sea squeezed and when the two plates collided the the Tethyan sediments were uplifted forming the mighty Himalaya.

Lots of Research has been done in timing the collision of the two plates leading to evolution and birth of the Tethyan Himalayas. But still there is no consensus and there are Himalayan opportunities for researchers to come up with a convincing model to time the collision and explain the birth of the Himalayas.

Keeping this in mind, the organizing committee of Tethy fossil museum and Research center decided to host a series of lectures by veteran geologists who dedicated their lives to understanding this geo mechanism.

The first among these is Dr. Peter Molnar from Department of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado who grew up seeing the Plate Tectonic Theory proposed by Alfred Wegner into reality and at a very tender age decided to move to SE Asia and concentrate on studying how large scale geodynamic process cause deformation of earth crust including earthquakes and building of mountain ranges. Later he focused his research to know how shifting continents, emergence of island, growth of the mountains etc affect the climate on geological scale

Dr. Peter Molnar sharedhis research and story about the growth of Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau in today's webinar which was attended by more then 100 delegates from India and abroad. Ms Osheen Gupta concluded the session by inviting the delegates to another session which will be hosted on Feburary 22, where Dr Nigel Huges Dept. of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of California authority on Trilobite and Tectonics will be sharing his research “Ups and downs in the Himalaya: using fossils to explore the evolution of the world’s greatest mountain chain”

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