new fossil finds in the Vindhyan basin in central India have, for the first time, fixed the age of the evolutionarily significant mountain basin, not very long ago considered palaentologically dead.

In the first record of extensive fossil assemblage unearthed from the basin, Chirananda De of the Geological Survey of India (gsi) has found evidence that the region dates back to the Ediacaran age (about 543 to 600 million years ago). Earlier, the exact age of the basin was not known and the Vindhyan region had been attributed a rough isotopic age.

The fossils were found in two separate zones in the Lakheri and Sirbu formations of the Bhander Group in the basin. There were nine kinds of coelenterates, one kind of arthropod and a few unnamed, possibly new, forms of sponges or coelenterates.

De's findings were published in the Journal of Earth Sciences recently. "This find also extends the bio-geographic range of the Ediacaran fossils to peninsular India,' De said.

The significance of the find in terms of establishing theories of evolution is that it chronicles the existence of a series of organisms