Vesta Mandaloi, a 41-year-old from Padlya village in Madhya Pradesh, was shocked to discover that the sacred totem balls in his family's home, worshipped by his ancestors as 'Kakar Bhairav' (Lord of the Land) for protecting their farmland and cattle, were actually dinosaur eggs.
The family's strong faith and belief made them the rightful guardians of the ancient totem, passed down through generations.
Like the Mandaloi family, several other villagers in the Dhar district and surrounding areas had similar totems that their families had worshipped for protection for years.
During a field visit, a group of researchers from the Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, had strong suspicions that these balls were not what they seemed to be.
Upon analysis, they found that these enigmatic stone ball totems were actually fossilised eggs of the Titanosaurus species of dinosaur.
Family Worshipping Ancestral Totem Turns Out to be Dinosaur Egg
© Photo : Twitter/@Abhinav12778
Titanosaurus, which means 'Titan lizard', is said to be the first Indian dinosaur to be named and properly described. The species was first recorded in 1877 and is believed to be the largest dinosaur to have roamed the planet around 70 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period.
In Madhya Pradesh's Dhar district, more than 250 eggs of the giant prehistoric reptile, which once roamed the Narmada valley, were unearthed earlier this year.
A team of researchers from Delhi University (DU) and the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) in Bhopal conducted an extensive field study, which was published in January in the prestigious scientific journal PLOS One.
A total of 92 nesting sites were discovered, yielding a remarkable 256 fossilised titanosaur eggs.