This book recognizes and celebrates the contributions of Professor Ashok Sahni to the field of paleontology. Prof. Sahni established a School of Vertebrate Palaeontology at Panjab University, Chandigarh, India, where he trained many of today’s vertebrate paleontologists of India. The book covers topics on evolutionary patterns, macroevolutionary events, origination and radiation events, changes in physical environments & climate and their implications for biodiversity dynamics, intercontinental affinities and biogeographic connections in a plate tectonic framework. The book begins by exploring India in the age of the dinosaurs, discussing new fossil remains from the Jurassic Era, then moves through the Cretaceous and Eocene to provide a picture on faunal and floral changes in Gondwanaland in the context of plate tectonics. Furthermore, the book explores the evolutionary patterns and biotic dispersals that resulted from the northward drift of Indian plate during the Cretaceous and its collision with Asia in the Eocene. The respective chapters reveal the role of plate tectonics and climate in shaping the geographical distribution of plants and animals in Gondwana, specifically in India, as well as the post-India/Asia collision implications for biodiversity changes and biogeography in the region’s continental environments. Given its scope, the book will appeal to vertebrate paleontologists, evolutionary biologists, and paleobiogeographers.

This book seeks to provide a new and integrated perspective on the Earth. Supporting the earth expansion theory and based on it, the book offers a new interpretation on the total earth system including global tectonics, which explains the cause of earth’s expansion, formation of the continents, oceans and mid-oceanic ridges, formation of mountain ranges, the nature of mantle, core and fluid geosphere, magnetic features of the planet, distribution of temperature pressure and gravity in the interior of the planet, cause of perennial heat of the planet and various other features of global significance. The book offers a totally new concept and interpretation of gravity and provides explanations as to why the earth’s core of the outer core using the new theory and the implication of the earth’s rotation in revamping and shaping the crustal manner.

Contributed articles.

This book presents in a concise format a simplified and coherent geological-dynamical history of the Indian subcontinent (including Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Southern Tibet and Pakistan). Encompassing a broad array of information related to structure and tectonics, stratigraphy and palaeontology, sedimentation and palaeogeography, petrology and geochemistry, geomorphology and geophysics, it explores the geodynamic developments that took place from the beginning around 3.4 billion years ago to the last about 5,000 years before present. Presented in a distilled form, the observations and deductions of practitioners, this book is meant for teachers, researchers and students of geology, geophysics and geomorphology and practitioners of earth sciences. A comprehensive list of references to original works provides guidance for those seeking further details and who wish to examine selected problems in depth. The book is illustrated with a wealth of maps, cross sections and block diagrams — all simplified and redesigned.

This books documents the salient characters of the tectonic evolution of the Indian subcontinent. It showcases the well investigated subcontinent of Gondwana. The book is linked to an updated geological and tectonic map of this region on 1:12,000,000 in scale. The Indian subcontinent displays almost uninterrupted and unique the geological history since about Eo-Archean (~3800 Ma) to recent, with the development of many Proterozoic deformed and metamorphosed fold belts around Archean nuclei, and enormously thick undeformed platform deposits. After their stabilization during late Proterozoic, the subcontinent underwent Paleozoic rifting and deposition of coal-bearing thick sequences, followed by enormously-thick outpouring of Deccan volcanics as a consequence of huge mantle plume. The youngest event in its evolution is the Cenozoic Himalayan Orogenic Mountains, spanning the area between Nanga Parbat and Namcha Barwah; a part of which extends both in Pakistan and Myanmar.