The peripatetic fossils: part 3
The articles printed below are by co-authors of some of the papers called into doubt by Talent. Two are by close colleagues of Gupta at the Centre of Advanced Study in Geology at Panjab University.
The peripatetic fossils: part 5
Replyingto articles published in last week's Nature, Talent re-asserts that V. J. Gupta is responsible for corrupting the palaeontological literature on the Himalayas.
Jurassic Invertebrates from the Himalayan Central Gneiss
Poorly preserved scleractinian corals and cephalopod molluscs occur in metamorphosed and foliated limestones in the Himalayas of northwest India. The nautiloid Cenoceras and macrocephalitid ammonites indicate a Middle Jurassic age. The fossils occur within a zone of high grade metamorphic rocks known as the Central Gneiss, previously regarded as an axial massif of Precambrian basement. Most palaeogeographic reconstructions feature this zone as a prominent topographic arch or ‘Himalayan Ridge’ which arose in the late Precambrian or early Palaeozoic and, through periodic rejuvenation, persisted throughout the Phanerozoic. Many workers believe that the ‘Himalayan Ridge’ constituted an effective barrier to north-south faunal migration because the terrains of sedimentary rock which flank the Central Gneiss contain quite different faunas. The Jurassic fossils provide new stratigraphic evidence that the tectonic events which generated the Central Gneiss are relatively young, and this, together with structural co...