Ahmedabad: A group of five geologists is set to embark on an expedition across India to trace 250 million years of the Earth’s geological history. The team, which includes a retired IAS officer, a former director of the Geological Survey of India (GSI) and an IIT Bombay post-doctoral fellow, has gathered in Ahmedabad ahead of the journey. Their aim is to visit geological sites across the country and piece together the changes in landforms, climate and life over millions of years.“What connects us all is the fact that we all are geologists by education and practice. The expedition is not just about seeing and studying the sites through a geologist’s perspective, but finding the story of Earth’s and India’s evolution over 250 million years that we can still experience,” said Manoj Singh, a retired IAS officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre.The other members are Suresh Chander, former director of GSI; Anand Singh, a geologist based in Indonesia; Ramesh Chander Behara, a post-doctoral fellow at IIT Bombay; and Anudeb Mandal, associate professor of Geology at Presidency College, Kolkata.“It started as a mapping exercise of different geological eras – mostly studied during school and college periods – on Indian terrain and we realised that almost all of it is stored here and very much accessible to the curious minds. It took us months to prepare an itinerary that covers different eras and best representative sites that we can visit,” Singh said.The team will also study the Deccan Traps in Maharashtra, formed by massive volcanic eruptions towards the end of the Cretaceous period, before eventually reaching Quaternary-age formations in Uttar Pradesh.The expedition draws on the concept of a ‘cosmic year’, also known as a galactic year, which refers to the time taken by the Sun to complete one orbit around the centre of the Milky Way. One such orbit takes approximately 225-250 million Earth years. The team points out that when the Sun was last at roughly the same position in its galactic orbit, Earth was in the Triassic period.Much of the planet’s landmass was joined in the supercontinent Pangaea, and dinosaurs were beginning to emerge. “In just one cosmic or galactic year, we have seen the emergence of different life forms, the journey of India’s landmass across the oceans and its collision with the Tibetan Plateau, the formation of the Himalayas, and different landforms. It is fascinating how all these events are recorded in soil beneath our feet,” Singh said.The journey will begin in Kutch, where Jurassic sedimentary rocks preserve evidence of an ancient marine environment from a time when India was part of the Gondwana landmass. Along the way, the geologists plan to examine evidence of plate tectonics, the evolution of life, changes in ecosystems and climate, and the formation of economically important geological resources.“We hope the expedition creates awareness among others, too, to appreciate the landforms around us,” Singh said.
