Pursuing the ‘Shiva crater’ theory of dinosaur extinction

August 31, 2014 03:34 am | Updated 03:34 am IST - Houston

In search of an answer to how dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago, Indian-American scientist Sankar Chatterjee will visit India in the spring of 2015 to continue research on the Shiva crater hypothesis that seeks to explain how the fearsome predators were wiped off the planet’s face.

Along with the Shiva crater, the Chicxulub crater of Mexico has been linked to the extinction of dinosaurs.

“The Shiva crater is about 500 km in diameter, and we discovered it from geophysical evidence and drill core samples in the Mumbai Offshore Basin on the western continental shelf of India,” Prof. Chatterjee, a Horn Professor of Paleontology and Curator at the Museum of Texas University, said in a statement.

“The crater is largely submerged and buried by a 2 to 7-km-thick strata and is the largest oilfield in India. I have been invited to participate in the Koyna Drilling Project to study the core samples that may unravel the genesis of the Shiva crater.”

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