Sunil Bajpai

Sunil Bajpai is the Chair Professor of Vertebrate Paleontology in the Department of Earth Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. He is in service as a professor at IIT Roorkee since 1st January 1996 till 30 September 2026. He also served as the director of the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences from January 2013 to July 2018.

Sunil Bajpai predominantly works on the Cenozoic vertebrates of India with focus on marine mammals, such as whales and sea cows. Bajpai and his collaborators fossil discoveries from the Eocene of Kutch (Gujarat) and the Himalayas have helped in understanding how whales have evolved. Bajpai also works on land mammals, which includes the early representatives of horses, artiodactyls, and primates, such as the stem perissodactyl family Cambaytheriidae, artiodactyl ''Gujaratia,'' and primates such as the adapoid ''Marcgodinotius'' and the omomyid ''[https://www.mindat.org/taxon-4974810.html Vastanomys].'' Additionally, he has worked on many other fossil vertebrates such as sharks, bony fishes, frogs, snakes, lizards, insectivores, rodents, etc. He has also been involved in studies of latest Cretaceous-Paleocene faunas of the Deccan volcanic province of India and their implications in understanding the northward drift of the Indian tectonic plate.

In 2023, Bajpai and colleagues reported on ''Tharosaurus indicus'', India's first dicraeosaurid dinosaur, from the Thar Desert of Jaisalmer, Rajasthan state, western India. The fossils were unearthed from Middle Jurassic outcrops of the Jaisalmer Formation. The taxon likely represents the oldest known record of this group and, seen in conjunction with previously known early Jurassic sauropods from India (''Barapasaurus'', ''Kotasaurus''), suggests that what is now India may have been a major centre for neosauropod evolution. In 2024, he coauthored the descriptions of what may be the largest known madtsoiid snake, ''Vasuki indicus'' from Naredi Formation, and the mammal ''Indotriconodon'' from the Late Cretaceous Intertrappean Beds. Provided by Wikipedia