Perambalur opens doors to history

India's first ammonite museum in Perambalur opened in May 2022. It houses 300 rare specimens, including a 100-million-year old shark tooth.

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THE sleepy village of Sathanur has a past of extinction. Sathanur and several other villages in the Perambalur district, believed to have been underwater around 135 million years ago, are a treasure trove of fossils of marine life that tread upon the earth aeons ago. An ammonite museum in Sathanur park, therefore, sits in perfect harmony with the past. Geologists and archaeologists from all over have praised Perambalur's archaeological glory, but the locals were unaware of it until Collector P Sri Venkada Priya took the initiative to transform the old tahsildar office into India's first exclusive ammonite museum.

Perambalur has preserved fossils that are proof of life preceding human life, and evidences of geological changes. Its archaeological richness was first addressed by a geologist named MS Krishnan in 1940, when he discovered the 120-million-year-old tree fossil in Sathanur, now preserved at the village. Later, the area was developed into a national fossil wood park by the geological department, which now sees an influx of geologists, school and college students, and tourists from across the country and abroad.