Sankar Chatterjee

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Sankar Chatterjee (born May 28, 1943 in Calcutta ) is an Indian-American vertebrate paleontologist and geologist.

Chatterjee studied at the University of Calcutta , where he received his doctorate in 1970, and was a post-doctoral student at the Smithsonian Institution in 1977/78 and Assistant Lecturer at George Washington University in 1976/77 . From 1968 to 1975 he was a senior lecturer in geology at the Indian Statistical Institute . In 1978/79 he was Assistant Lecturer at George Mason University and from 1979 first Assistant Lecturer and Curator, 1984 Associate Professor (and Director of the Antarctic Research Center) and from 1986 Professor of Geology at Texas Tech University , where he taught Paul W. Horn Professor for Geosciencesis and curator for paleontology at their museum. In 1998 he became a member of the Texas Tech Academy.

In 1991/92 and 1995 he was visiting professor at the University of Tübingen .

He researched the evolution, origins and systematics of Mesozoic reptiles, archosaurs , dinosaurs , pterosaurs and birds, for example in the Triassic India and Texas ( Keuper (Dockum Group) from Post Quarry). He also conducted research in Antarctica (Marie Byrd Land and South Victoria Land from 1979). He first described the Rauisuchia Postosuchus kirkpatricki (1985, Post Quarry) and Tikisuchus (1987, India, with Majumdar). Further first descriptions are Technosaurus , Shuvosaurus (1993, named after his son who discovered the fossil), Awalkeria (1987, first called Walkeria ), Nambalia (2011 with Fernando Novas, T. Kutty, Martin Ezcurra), the Indian plateosaur Jaklapallisaurus (with Novas, Kutty, Ezcurra 2011) and with Peter Galton , Paul Upchurch and T. Kutty Pradhania (2007) and Lamplughsaura (2007) from the Lower Jurassic in India and the Jurassic sauropod Barapasaurus from India (1975, with SL Jain, T. Kutty , T. Row-Chaudhury).

He is also known for his research on the evolution of birds. However, his identification of an ancestor of the birds Protoavis texensis from the Keuper of Post Quarry remained very controversial. The find would bring the origins of the birds forward some 75 million years before Archeopteryx and should still show more bird features than Archeopteryx. He received support from Evgeny Kurochkin and Stefan Peters , for example, and Luis Chiappe was a prominent critic of the interpretation . Others consider the partially poorly preserved fossil remains to be chimeras (made up of fossil remains from different species) and the vast majority doubt their classification as bird ancestors.

With engineer Rick Lind and students, Chatterjee built a remote-controlled flight model of a pterodactyl (pterodrone) in 2008 . In 2007 he said he and the aeronautical engineer R. Templin could prove that the feathered microraptors found in China would have been able to glide.

In 2009 he advocated the interpretation of the Shiva Basin in the western continental shelf of India as an impact crater at the turn of the Cretaceous / Tertiary, which was then about 500 km in diameter of larger size than the crater in Yucatán . Previously, the Deccan volcanism at the turn of the Cretaceous-Tertiary was held responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs.

He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2001) and the Geological Society of America (1995). In 1982 he was awarded the National Science Foundation's Antarctic Service Medal. He is a US citizen.

Fonts

  • The Rise of Birds, Johns Hopkins University Press 1997
  • with RJ Templin: Posture, Locomotion, and Paleoecology of Pterosaurs , Geological Society of America, Special Paper 376, 2004

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life data according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
  2. ↑ Chatterjee Skull of Protoavis and Early Evolution of Birds . Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 7 (3) (Suppl.): 14A, 1987
  3. ↑ Chatterjee Cranial anatomy and relationships of a new Triassic bird from Texas , Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 332, 1991, 277-342
  4. ↑ Chatterjee The triassic bird Protoavis , Archeopteryx, 13, 1995, 15–31
  5. ↑ Pterodactyl inspired robot to master air, ground and sea, Science Daily, October 5, 2008
  6. ^ Giant Impact Near India - Not Mexico - May Have Doomed Dinosaurs , Geological Society of America 2009
personal data
SURNAME Chatterjee, Sankar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Indian-American vertebrate paleontologist and geologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 28, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Calcutta