Palaeontology: In search of an identity in the 21st Century

Abstract

This article tries to examine how the study of palaeontology can be made more effective and visible at a time when the country faces several other acute problems of resources limitation and natural hazard mitigation. It looks at the subject in a larger planetary framework specially with regard to the origin of life, extinction, climatic fluctuations, as a tool for oil and mineral fuel exploration and above all, as a contributing factor in identified thrust areas of Indian geology.