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UP scientist fights Canadian varsity for claim to discovery

Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow

A retired geology professor of Kumaon University is fighting a lone battle against denial of his claim to a path-breaking piece of research that is an extension to Charles Darwin's theory on evolution of life on earth.

Professor S B Misra, who claims he has documentary evidence to support his claim to the discovery of what is called by the University of New Foundland as Mistaken Point, was shocked to find his name struck off from the credits three decades after the theory was first propounded.

"My discovery of 560 million-year-old fossils was attributed to 'members and faculty' of the Canadian University. I got to know of this through the Internet," Misra told rediff.com.

That another Canadian website chose to give credit for the discovery to Misra's field assistant added salt to injury.

Misra's discovery sheds light on the theory of evolution of life on earth, which, according to Darwin, began with fully grown animals whose existence dates back 545 million years. Darwin said that life evolved from a single-celled bacteria to monkeys - a theory that provoked the question: how did single-celled matter convert to multi-cellular ones?

Misra's discovery proved that soft-bodied animals that lived in water evolved from bacteria. The fossils he discovered provided the missing link to the evolution of life on earth. Misra was the first geologist to investigate the Avalon peninsula in Canada as part of his master's thesis submitted to Memorial University of New Foundland.

Explaining how he spotted impressions of these multi-cellular organisms, Misra recalled, "In 1967, when I was doing my master's from Memorial University, I spotted some leaf-like impressions on rocks where I was assigned to carry out mappings in the south-eastern Avalon peninsula of New Foundland. It prompted me to probe deeper and eventually after I could confirm the dating of these impressions to 560 million years, I realised what I found proved the existence of multi-cellular organisms in that era and that these had been once part of marine life," he added.

Misra's professor and guide at the university, M.M.Anderson chose to add his name to the research paper. "Yet, what gave me greatest satisfaction was that this discovery received international acclaim," he said.

Little did he realise what was in store for him three decades later when the website of the Department of Geological Sciences at Queens's University, Ontario attributed this discovery to "students and faculty of Memorial University". The Encyclopaedia of New Foundland and Labrador claimed Misra's field assistant Paul Thompson was the main discoverer.

What kept Misra's claim alive were the University of California, Berkeley and Yale University, whose records attributed the research to the real discoverer. "This could be verified from: "http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vendian/mistaken.html and http://www.yale.edu/ypmip/locations/mistaken/," Misra said.

Armed with original papers and records of these two universities, the Indian scientist, now 59, recently lodged a formal protest with Professor Guy Narbourne of Queens University. Narbourne acknowledged Misra's contribution but has yet to make a correction in the university's website.

Misra , who was available on http://members.rediff.com/mistakenpoint, describes this as "scientific camouflage for vested reasons". His pioneering work finds mention in Nature magazine (1968), Bulletin of Geological Society of America papers of 1969 and 1971; in the Journal of the Geological Society of India paper of 1980, and his thesis of 1969.

What continues to irk him is that his deductions and observations, constituting path-breaking work on the subject, were being recycled without acknowledging his role - and that too when there is talk about intellectual property rights.

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