A little over three years ago, researchers reported a sensational fossil find in Madhya Pradesh that, it was said, would confirm the formation of the supercontinent Gondwanaland about 550 million years ago. Modern-day South America, Africa, Asia, Australia and Antarctica are said to have been created by the break-up of this supercontinent. However, the reported fossil from the Bhimbetka rock shelters, a UNESCO World Heritage Site for Palaeolithic and Mesolithic cave art, about 40km from Bhopal, has turned out to be something far more mundane.
What researchers had thought could be the first-ever fossil to be found in India of Dickinsonia tenuis, the earth’s ‘oldest animal’, dating back 570 million years, has, on closer examination, proved to be the impression of a recently decayed beehive.
Both the original finding and the new study were published in the international journal Gondwana Research.
A team that included researchers from the University of Florida in the US visited the site in 2022 and was surprised to see signs of the object having decayed since its discovery, something unusual for a fossil. Earlier known Dickinsonia fossils were up to four feet in length. The one in Bhimbetka was only 17 inches long. Further, the “fossil” was not part of the rock at the site, but was “attached as a tracery of waxy material” above its surface, The Independent newspaper reported. Photos from the original study also revealed “honeycombed structures” within the “fossil”.
“A closer look demonstrates that the impression resulted from decay of a modern beehive which was attached to a fractured rock surface which, at first glance, resembles Dickinsonia,” the researchers explained in their report. “The fossil was peeling off the rock,” Joseph Meert, professor of geology at the University of Florida, said in a statement.
The authors of the original study have agreed with the new findings, the newspaper said.
Like the rock shelters themselves, the fossil-that-wasn’t was found by chance when two scientists from the Geological Survey of India were on a sightseeing tour of Bhimbetka ahead of the 36th International Geological Congress, scheduled for March 2020. The congress was postponed twice on account of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The duo spotted the leaf-like impression 11 feet above ground, almost blending with the rock and easily mistaken for prehistoric rock art. They thought the imprint resembled those of Dickinsonia tenuis found in South Australia. The prehistoric animal is believed to be a key link between early, simple organisms and the explosion of life in the Cambrian period, about 541 million years ago.
India’s oldest known stone-age tools, up to 1.5 million years old, are at a prehistoric site near Madras, S.B. Ota, retired joint director general of the Archaeological Survey of India, told The Times of India newspaper when the suspected fossil was found. He said the ASI only “deals in geologic time scale, quaternary period, that began 2.6 million years ago and extends into the present. Anything before the beginnings of human evolution is not covered.”
Sandy Pawpaw
Sandy Pawpaw is a fierce advocate of unleashing the animal in, and with, you.
