Fossil park at 250 million-year-old tsunami site in Srinagar

Jammu and Kashmir’s summer capital Srinagar will soon get an International fossil park, displaying a broader view of the geological history of the Himalayan state and its neighbourhood.

The project, to be named as Kashmir Triassic Fossil Park, is being sponsored by the J&K tourism department in collaboration with the Centre for Himalayan Geology under the aegis of Environmental Policy Group. Srinagar’s deputy commissioner, Dr Farooq Ahmed Lone, said the park would be laid at Khonmoh on the peripheries of the city.

After visiting the site of the proposed park on Sunday, he sought the records from the state’s departments of revenue and wildlife, so that the project is commissioned at the earliest.

Director, tourism, Kashmir, Mehmood Ahmad Shah, said that apart from being important from the tourism point of view, the site would facilitate scholars in their research work on the subject. “The park has been envisaged to give a broader display of the state’s geological history,” he said, adding that the department of geology and geophysics of the University of Kashmir has agreed to shift some of the fossils to the park from its campus. A museum for displaying the artefacts would be part of the proposed park.

A few years ago, a mammoth skeleton of an elephant was excavated from Khonmoh, making it geographically and geologically an “attractive site”. Mr Lone said, “This is a unique site in the world where we have signs of the mass extinction of species during mass tsunami that occurred 250 million years back.”

The deputy commissioner said that the land for Chasm-e-Awami project has also been identified in the area which is culmination of three natural springs — Lodhu, Zewan and Khonmoh Spring. It too would be developed by the tourism department.