In news- The teeth of new species of Hybodont shark of Jurassic age have been reported for the first time from Jaisalmer by a team of officers from the Geological Survey of India (GSI), Western Region, Jaipur.
Key updates-
- Hybodont sharks have been reported for the first time from the Jurassic rocks (between 160 and 168 million-years-old) of the Jaisalmer region of Rajasthan.
- Hybodonts, an extinct group of sharks, was a dominant group of fishes in both marine and fluvial environments during the Triassic and early Jurassic time.
- They became extinct at the end of the Cretaceous time 65 million years ago.
- The newly discovered crushing teeth from Jaisalmer represent a new species named by the research team as Strophodusjaisalmerensis.
- The genus Strophodus has been identified for the first time from the Indian subcontinent and is only the third such record from Asia, the other two being from Japan and Thailand.
- The new species has recently been included in Shark references.com, an international platform operating in association with International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Species Survival Commission (SSC), and Germany.
About Geological Survey of India (GSI)-
- It was set up in 1851 primarily to find coal deposits for the Railways.
- It is headquartered in Kolkata, and is an attached office to the Ministry of Mines.
- It has attained the status of a geo-scientific organisation of international repute.
- Its main functions relate to creating and updating of national geoscientific information and mineral resource assessment.
- These objectives are achieved through ground surveys, air-borne and marine surveys, mineral prospecting and investigations, multi-disciplinary geoscientific, geo-technical, geo-environmental and natural hazards studies, glaciology and seismotectonic study.
- It has regional offices in Lucknow, Jaipur, Nagpur, Hyderabad and Shillong.
Source: PIB
