Fossils a way of life for Narmada’s Dinosaur Man’

BHOPAL: Vishal Verma, 52, remembers the day he first held a dinosaur egg in his hands.

It was the winter of 2006, and Verma was in the process of guiding a PhD scholar around fossil sites on the banks of the river Narmada, something he had done several times before.

Earlier that year, Verma had helped the Madhya Pradesh government set up the Archaeological Museum in Mandu to store fossilised discoveries from the river basin. In his mind, therefore, it was to be one of his last excavations.

“T had thought now that a government museum has come up, there was little relevance for my work. I was basically handing over my duties to this scholar with a mind to retire,” Verma said.

Then, during that dig, he found a set of 25 soropaud dinosaur eggs, which over the next three months grew to a 100. Then 36 years old, Verma remembers that his ecstatic mind wandered to Phantom, Lee Falk’s iconic comic strip, centered around a costumed crusader fighting crime in the fictional land of Bangalla.

“In the Phantom comics, there was a character called Stegy, who was a Stegosaurus dinosaur. When I held that first dinosaur egg that I excavated, I felt like I was the Phantom,” Verma said.

Sixteen years have passed since then, and in that time, Verma has built for himself a unique identity. He is a physics teacher to Class 11 and 12 students from the Higher Secondary Boys School in Bakaner. But he is also Narmada’s Dinosaur Man” who spends his time finding, excavating, and preserving dinosaur fossils, raising awareness and piquing scientific interest in the process.

“Even today, with every egg that I find, I feel the same excitement I felt in 2006,” Verma said.