Sunil Bajpai

Sunil Bajpai (born 30 September 1961) 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 1 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. 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.

Education

Bajpai carried out his Ph.D. studies in Paleontology from the Centre of Advanced Study in Geology, Panjab University, Chandigarh, in 1990.

Honors and awards Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India (2008) National Geoscience Award, Ministry of Mines, Government of India (2014) National award for Geosciences and Technology, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Govt of India (2018) J C Bose National Fellowship 2026 Ptilotrypa bajpaii a fossil bryozoan, and Limnocythere bajpaii a fossil ostracod are named after Bajpai in recognition of his contributions

Collaborators

J. G. M. Thewissen, the Dutch-American Paleontologist from the Northeast Ohio Medical University, Rootstow, whose research is mainly focused on whale evolution, and Daryl Domning from Howard University, Washington D.C., specialist of fossil sirenians have been the main collaborators of Bajpai.

Selected publications

Bajpai, Sunil; Kapur, Vivesh V; Das, Debasis P; Tiwari, B N; Saravanan, N; Sharma, Ritu (2005). Early Eocene land mammals from the Vastan Lignite Mine, District Surat (Gujarat), western India Journal of the Palaeontological Society of India. Bajpai, Sunil; Kay, Richard F.; Williams, Blythe A.; Das, Debasis P.; Kapur, Vivesh V.; Tiwari, B. N. (2008). "The oldest Asian record of Anthropoidea". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. 105 (32): 11093–11098. doi:10.1073/pnas.0804159105. ISSN 0027-8424.