PEDDAPALLI: In a rare finding, workers of the Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) stumbled upon fossils of a pre-historic mammal that resembled the modern-day elephant at the Medipalli Open Cast Mines-4 in Ramagundam on Monday.Speaking to Express, Ch Venugopal Rao, a paleontologist, who retired as the Deputy Director General of Geological Survey of India, said that the fossils belonged to the pre-historic creature, Stegodon, that roamed the Earth somewhere between 8-11 million years ago.
He said that this was the first discovery of Stegodon fossil in the region towards the south of the Narmada River. Earlier, there have been discoveries of fossils of pre-historic mammals resembling hippopotamus and rhinoceros from Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, but never that of a pre-historic elephant-like mammal.
The fossil discovery also gives us a glimpse of how the environment was completely different in the Telangana region millions of years ago, as Stegodon required thick green vegetation to survive. Rao said that Stegodon’s adaptability was low, and as the climate changed in the region, they went extinct. The discovered fossils are of the tusk and part of the trunk of the mammal. The tusk fossils measured 1.5 and 1.17 m. SCCL officials informed that the fossils were discovered 20 m below the surface.
Assistant Director of Archeology Department P Nagaraju said that earlier, in the Jaipur area of Mancherial district, many fossils of dinosaurs were discovered and sent to the Kolkata museum. He said a survey of this area would be conducted and the fossils would be housed in the Karimnagar Archeological Museum.