The fossil, discovered in 2013, was about to be destroyed last week during the construction of a four-lane highway

A 20-million-year-old fossilised tree, discovered on the outskirts of Himachal Pradesh’s Kumarhatti town, was saved from destruction, a geologist said on Sunday.

The tree fossil discovered in 2013 was about to be destroyed last week during the construction of a four-lane Parwanoo-Shimla highway at Raboon village, some 50 km from Chandigarh, geologist-entrepreneur Ritesh Arya said.

He said numerous flora and fauna fossils have been discovered in Kasauli, Barog, Kumarhatti, Dharampur and Subathu areas, located in the Shivaliks, in Solan district.

The entire area, he said, should be preserved by declaring it as geo-fossil forest for in-site conservation, meaning the conservation of an archaeological asset in its original location.

Mr. Arya claimed that the discovered fossils dated back to paleo-flooding that was related to global warming and glacial melt, resulting in floods. The flooding uprooted trees and buried them under sand along the river channels, leading to petrification — a process of fossilisation in which dissolved minerals replace organic matter.

The saved fossil tree is 12-feet tall and one-metre wide.

“It’s believed that the fossil might be more than 100-feet tall,” Mr. Arya, who holds a Guinness Book of World Record for discovering groundwater at an altitude of 11,000 ft in Ladakh, added.

He said this was the second fossilised tree in the region that was saved from destruction.

Earlier, a 25-million-year-old fossil of a five-foot tall and three-foot wide tree was discovered a few years ago at Jagjitnagar near Kasauli. The fossil, which was standing on a rock, was conserved as the land where it was located was a private land and the owner took initiative to preserve it. — IANS