Desi Stones and Bones

The story of an aquatic predator that was once more famous than its superstar fossil cousins with the same last name -- dinosaurs.

The arena was Africa and the gong had rung for giant descendants of proboscideans or snout-bearing mammals -- hairy, milk-producing animals. Bubbling away in the evolutionary saucepan, they grew in size and branched into a dozen strangely named families including four-tusked gomphotheriidae; the sickled lower-tusks bearing deinotheriidae; or the flat-headed, stockier mammutidae. The list also includes elephantidae -- a name that may sound familiar because it’s the clan modern elephants belong to.

More than 50 million years ago, a deer-like, hoofed herbivore wandered along the banks of a river near the ancient Tethys sea. What would it evolve into?

About 70 million years ago, a limbless reptile crunched into dinosaur eggs to slurp out its contents, which included a squirming hatchling. But this beanfest collapsed under a wet blanket of mud.

Early last year, Jinu Koshy, a 42-year-old archaeologist made his first trip to a desolate mesa located in the south-Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. A bird’s eye view of an online map showed a rumpled terrain, very similar to a spot nearby that Jinu had helped excavate. Now, that archaeological dig had happened more than a decade ago. But it had unwrapped some of south India’s oldest rock art. Rock art on the walls of cave shelters. Basically, prime studio pads for prehistoric man. And so, since the landscapes bore close resemblances, Jinu was kind of sure that this site too could have housed doodling hunter gatherers.