Saketi The Shivalik Fossil Park

THE Shivalik Fossil Park at Saket, a small village, 14km south of Nahan, and about 5 km from the industrial town of Kala Amb, on the border of Haryana and Himachal Pardesh, is one of the most unique attractions in this state. It is the first park in Asia which has been developed at a site, where fossils were actually found.           More Information

Built in 1974, it underlines the beginning of new era in the history of national geological monuments of India, and is an attempt to make the common man aware of rich heritage and the mysteries of science and nature.

The Shivalik hills which represent about 6,000 metres of layered sequence or rocks the oldest of which were formed about 25 million years ago , are the outer mountains of the Himalayas and occupy an important place in the evolutionary history of man. There are over whelming evidences-geological pale anthropological and archaeological to prove that millions of years ago some of the early ancestors of man originated and evolved in this region. Ever since man came down to the plains the Shivalik have played a key role.

Most of the mammals in this region then got extinct during the ice-age of the Pleistocene about two million year ago and those that survived migrated to other areas. The remains of the extinct mammals got fossil in the rock formations in these regions.

Smaller sizes of the animals displayed in the Shivalik Fossil park at Saketi are also displayed in the Museum at Shimla.