Sankar Chatterjee

Sankar Chatterjee
Occupation	paleontologist
Known for	Study of prehistoric vertebrates

Sankar Chatterjee is a paleontologist, and is the Paul W. Horn Professor of Geosciences at Texas Tech University and Curator of Paleontology at the Museum of Texas Tech University. He earned his Ph. D. from the University of Calcutta in 1970 and was a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution from 1977-1978.

Dr. Chatterjee's has focused on the origin, evolution, functional anatomy, and systematics of Mesozoic vertebrates, including basal archosaurs, dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and birds. He has researched Late Triassic reptiles in India, such as phytosaurs, rhynchosaurs, and prolacertiformes. He is best known for his work on vertebrates recovered in the 1980s from the Post Quarry in the Late Triassic Cooper Canyon Formation (Dockum Group) of West Texas. The material includes the large rauisuchian Postosuchus, which was named for the nearby town of Post. It also included controversial specimens Chatterjee identified as being avian (Protoavis). The identification of these specimens as avian would push back the origin of birds by at least 75 million years.

In 2008, Chatterjee and Rick Lind designed a 30-inch unmanned aerial vehicle with a large, thin rudder inspired by the crest of a Tapejara.

Genera named

Name	Year	Status	Coauthor(s)	Notes	Images
Alwalkeria	year	Valid taxon.	Creisler.		Afrovenator
Barapasaurus	year	Valid taxon.	Jain Kutty Roy-Chowdhury
Lamplughsaura	year	Valid taxon.	Kutty Peter Galton Upchurch
Postosuchus	year	Valid taxon.	N/A
Pradhania	year	Valid taxon.	Kutty Sankar Chatterjee Peter Galton Upchurch
Shuvosaurus	year	Valid taxon.	N/A
Technosaurus	year	Valid taxon.	Authors
Walkeria	year	Preoccupied.	N/A	Name preoccupied by a bryozoan. Renamed Alwalkeria in 1994.

Books

• The Rise of Birds
• New Concepts in Global Tectonics
• Posture, Locomotion, and Paleoecology of Pterosaurs