The Indian Museum of the Earth (TIME)

Mains Paper 3: Science & Technology | Achievement of Indians in science & technology

From UPSC perspective, the following things are important:

Prelims level: The Indian Museum of the Earth (TIME)

Mains level: India’s geological and paleontological evolution

India has set in motion an ambitious plan to create Indianised version of the world-famous Smithsonian Museum, showcasing Indian subcontinent’s evolutionary history.

The Indian Museum of the Earth (TIME)

This museum will be modelled on the American Museum of Natural History, or the Smithsonian museum in the U.S.
The museum, which will be set up as a public-private partnership, would be located somewhere in NCR.
Unlike static museums that are commonplace, the proposed Earth museum would be a dynamic place to encourage fossil research, student activity, public outreach besides driving policy decisions.
The museum would be having a repository where individual collectors and researchers can submit their life long collection for safekeeping and allowing future generation researchers to study those samples.

India’s richness

India has a rich geological history and fossils dating back to the breaking up of the Gondwanaland super-continent nearly 150 million years ago.
Prominent fossils include the jaw of an extinct ape, Gigantopithecus bilaspurensi, dinosaur eggs so large they were mistaken for cannon balls, and the skeleton of a horned carnivore, Rajasaurus narmadensis, or the royal Narmada dinosaur.

Why need such museum?

India is home to a vast treasury of geological and palaeontological specimens that contain a wealth of scientific information about the planet and its history.
Several collections of fossils and important geological specimens weren’t properly organised, and they survived only due to the efforts of individual researchers who maintained them within their labs.
But these rare specimens are scattered in different labs all over the country.
India doesn’t have a single such museum of repute, or a repository where new finds may be compared to those already discovered.

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