Living Sands: The Art and Science Microfossils

Speaker: Professor P.K. Saraswati, Professor of Earth Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay

 

Chair:Prof. S.K. Tandon, D.N.Wadia Chair Professor, IIT Kanpur

 

Life is nearly 4 billion years old on this planet but skeletal formation is a much younger phenomenon during the Cambrian period, about 550 million years ago. The skeletal remains of the organisms evolved since the Cambrian times are preserved as fossils in the rock records.To a scientist, the microfossils are the source of interpretation of geological processes in deep time. Three groups of protists, Foraminifera, Coccolithophores and Radiolarian, will be discussed in the talk for their shell-architecture, as exemplars of co-existence in nature and as indicators of palaeoenvironment and palaeoclimate