Dhar (Madhya Pradesh): The 'Stone balls' that people in Dhar and nearby regions of Madhya Pradesh had been worshipping for years now were revealed to be fossilised dinosaur eggs.
According to TOI report, the 40-year-old Vesta Mandaloi of Padlya village had been worshipping these balls as 'Kakar Bhairav' because his ancestors had advised him that the 'kuldevta (totem)' would always protect his cattle and farmland.
'Bhairav ' signifies ruler, while 'Kakar' implies land or farm. Similar to the Mandaloi, a large number of people in Dhar and the surrounding areas worshipped balls that they discovered during excavation work.
According to Professor Mahesh Thakkar of the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences in Lucknow, there have been about 256 dinosaur eggs discovered in the Dhar district over a 120-kilometre area.
During a recent field visit, scientists from Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences in Lucknow discovered that the balls the locals had been worshipping were really fossilised eggs belonging to the Titanosaurus species of dinosaurs.
Notably, almost a year ago, in the Narmada valley in Dhar district of the state, paleontologists have discovered 256 eggs belonging to the herbivorous titanosaurs, as well as a rare find of closely spaced dinosaur nests.
In the Bagh and Kukshi regions of the Dhar district, researchers from Delhi University and the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Mohanpur-Kolkata and Bhopal have also reported finding ovum-in-ovo, or multi-shell, eggs.
The results were published in the PLoS One research journal by Harsha Dhiman, Vishal Verma, and Guntupalli Prasad.
Minute information about the life of the long-necked sauropods that roamed the area over 66 million years ago have been discovered through studying the nests and eggs.
