 "Photo: Ken Muir")
When a team from the paleontology division at Texas Tech discovered a crater with a diameter of 500 kilometers linked to the mass extinction of the dinosaurs, the professor leading the expedition knew what the crater’s name should be.
According to Sankar Chatterjee, Horn Professor of Geosciences and curator for paleontology at the Museum of Texas Tech, dinosaurs lived on Earth for 160 million years. Mammals, on the other hand, have existed for 6 million years. He said although some mammals lived during the age of the dinosaurs, they were very small — almost the size of mice — because of how dominating dinosaurs were in the environment.
All those things changed 65 million years ago, he said, when the dinosaurs were destroyed. From looking at the past, the Tech professor said destruction and renewal coincide with each other because with destruction comes a rebirth.
If the dinosaurs did not become extinct, he said mammals would not have been allowed to grow and therefore the world would not have been the same. He chose to name the crater after the Indian deity of destruction, Shiva, for this reason.
“People always thought that Shiva was the god of destruction, but if you look at the history of everything, destruction brings a renewal,” Chatterjee said. “Without destruction, you cannot start; nature cannot start.”
Chatterjee presented his discoveries about the 500 kilometers-wide crater Oct. 18 at the annual meeting of Geological Society of America in Portland, Ore.
His research on the Shiva Crater and the link of the crater to the cause of the mass extinction of the dinosaurs is still a work in progress. He and another team are returning to India in December to collect more information about the crater. Even so, his research has gained a lot of media attention, which is something he said he did not expect.
“This is beyond my dream because we have been working on this program for a long, long time,” he said.
Chatterjee, born and raised in Kolkata, India, said when he was a child, he never thought he would be doing what he is doing now. Because his father was a chemist, Chatterjee always mixed different chemicals and made firecrackers when he was younger.
During his undergraduate studies, Chatterjee said a British paleontologist came to India to find dinosaurs. He said at the time he was focusing on geology but the paleontologist said she could change that and became his first guide and mentor to fossils.
“Ask any kid and they’ll know any name of dinosaurs,” Chatterjee said, “but I started much, much later.”
His wife, Sibani Chatterjee, also of Kolkata, said she met Sankar Chatterjee when they were young. She said they married right after they graduated from high school, during her first year in undergraduate studies. They have been married for about 40 years, and she said the passion he has for his research in paleontology always has been evident.
“Since I’ve known him for so long,” his wife said with a smile, “that has been his life and dream.”
Sibani Chatterjee said that after their marriage she moved with her husband to several places. She said from India they moved to Berkley, Calif., where he taught as a visiting professor. They then moved to Washington, D.C., where he was a researcher at the Smithsonian Institution, before she said they finally made the move to Lubbock.
Throughout the years, Sibani Chatterjee said she has accompanied her husband on several of his paleontology expeditions, such as trips to China, India, South Africa and Brazil. The paleontologist’s wife said she does not see her husband retiring from his work anytime soon.
“I feel very proud because I see how hard he works,” she said. “That’s his main goal, to learn and to publish.”
Sankar Chatterjee said the reason he came to Tech from the Smithsonian Institution was the opportunity to travel and research in Antarctica, which was a dream of his. During his first years at Tech in the ‘70s, he and a team comprised of students completed four expeditions to Antarctica where they collected huge fossils.
The next location Sankar Chatterjee said he led an expedition to was China in 1985, something he said was an honor. He said the paleontology team from Tech was probably the first allowed to dig by the Chinese government.
In about 1986, Sankar Chatterjee said is when the paleontology team from Tech began traveling to India. The reason he said they began their expeditions to India was to study the Deccan Traps in hopes of finding the last dinosaurs. What the team ended up finding and has been researching for the past 20 years is the Shiva Crater, which supports the meteor theory of how the dinosaurs became extinct.
Another place Sankar Chatterjee said the Tech paleontology department excavates fossils is located in Lubbock’s backyard. Until he came to Tech, he didn’t realize the amount of Triassic fossils that were in the area. He said after talking to a landowner in Post, Tech received permission to begin excavating the area and has been ever since.
Being able to dig in the area, Sankar Chatterjee said, led to several discoveries of fossils including new species of archosaurs, such as the postosuchus, which is named after the Post quarry.
“We collected hundreds and hundreds of specimens, many of them new to science,” Sankar Chatterjee said. “We published it and many of the students actually got involved and got their master’s and doctoral under me.”
Bill Mueller, a doctorate student studying under Sankar Chatterjee from Eastland, said he has worked at the museum as the collections manager in the paleontology division for about 10 years. He met Sankar Chatterjee in the early ‘80s on a West Texas geosciences field and later moved to Lubbock because of the impressive paleontology department at the Museum of Texas Tech.
Mueller and Sankar Chatterjee are co-authoring papers about a different genus and species of dicynodonts they found during excavations at Post. He said working with Sankar Chatterjee has been beneficial and a privilege.
“He’s extremely knowledgeable and he is very innovative with some of his works and his ideas,” Mueller said. “He is highly respected in the paleontology community.”
Andy Gedeon, a Tech alumnus from Cleveland, has spent the past five years as the senior technician in the paleontology division at the museum. As a senior technician, he helps mount fossils and has assisted Sankar Chatterjee with his last research. He said he never expected there to be such a large collection of fossils at Tech.
“I’m from Cleveland,” Gedeon said. “West Texas is nothing to me. Yeah, I didn’t expect to have a paleontology department and to have the area be fossil rich.”
Gedeon said he believes Sankar Chatterjee’s research brings a lot of attention to the department, which helps gain and maintain research efforts. Not only that, he said Sankar Chatterjee’s work has led to many discoveries and a better understanding of the Triassic period.
“He’s done a tremendous job in building this department and collecting fossils,” Gedeon said. “When he first came here, there wasn’t a lot of Triassic fossils.”
Sankar Chatterjee also said he believes the paleontology department at Tech has the best Triassic collection and probably the best Antarctic collection in the nation, something he said is a gift for future Red Raiders.
“So, these are really deposited for the future generations,” Sankar Chatterjee said. “Young people will come study and all these things. That’s the treasure of Texas Tech. I’ll be gone, but future students will come, they’ll study and they’ll stay here.”
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