The Wadadam Fossil Park

The Wadadam Fossil Park is situated near the village of Wadadam in Sironcha taluka in Gadchiroli District of Maharashtra. It is located 189 km. from the District headquarters in Gadchiroli and 19 km. from Sironcha. A group of paleontologists have unearthed fossils in the region, which they claim date back millions of years and are believed to be of dinosaurs. Sironcha is among the five places in the country where dinosaur fossils have been found in large numbers. A full-fledged skeleton of a dinosaur was found in 1959 near the Godavari basin in Kothapalli-Pochampally village that borders Telangana. The fossil has since then been kept in a Kolkata museum.

Location

Wadadam Fossil Park is on NH 16 which connects Nizamabad in Telangana and Jagdalpur in Chhattisgarh. the nearest railway stations are Mancherial in Telangana and Ballarshah in Maharashtra.

Age of the Fossils

Wadadam Fossil Park is half a square kilometer area which is India’s first dinosaur site, where flora and fauna fossils are found in intact form. Fossils of flora were present at the time when the Sauropods existed in these parts of the Indian Subcontinent. This area was full of forests that had Glossopteris and Dadoxylon conifer trees with the co-existing giant Sauropods approximately in the middle of the Jurassic period.

Geology

Waddham Fossil Park is an area in the proximity of the Pranhita and Godavari rivers near Sironcha. This area, including parts of Telangana, has yielded some of the best-known dinosaur fossils in India and probably is the only locality of the oldest dinosaurs (Triassic, 220 million years ago).  There are complete fossil forests buried under the thick alluvium of the Godavari-Pranhita rivers, which can be seen in excellent condition at Waddham. These fossilized woods are believed to be of the Jurassic Age (200-140 million years ago).

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The fossils found in the area are part of the Gondwana basin and expose a continuous sequence of upper Gondwana sediments. The place is being shaped into a fossil park. There are 24 such sites in Sironcha. This area is not only known for good fossil remains of fishes, but also for Barapasaurus, Kotasaurus, Yamanpalliensis dinosaurs, and a few others. Well preserved Barapasaurus skeleton is at present kept in the Museum of Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Kolkata.

Stone Age Sites

Stone Age (Paleolithic) tools have been found at Wadadam Fossil Park. These stone tools were used approximately around 2.5 million years ago. This place is also known for fossils of fishes and dinosaurs like Barapasaurus, Kotasaurus, Yamanpalliensis, and some others. There are a total of 24 fossil sites in Sironcha.

Sources-gadchiroli.gov.in, wikipedia.org, Timesofindia