I do not understand. Too short for what? Is that an implicit permis-
sion for me to study the fossils? A light at the end of the tunnel?
But then the conversation goes nowhere, and it gets late. She repeats
some stories, and tells more, about Sahni, Ranga Rao, and how hard her
life is here. I throw in the towel and signal the others that we should leave.
It is now pouring outside. We stand on the porch of the big house, in
full view of the heap of rocks. She says the collection needs to be prop-
erly displayed and housed before anyone can work on it, but that I am
welcome to visit her anytime. Then comes my opening.
“The heap only contains stones from Kalakot,” she says. “Maybe
useful for microfossils.”
“Can I take a few blocks and see if I can find some microfossils?”
“Of course you can. There are no large fossils there, only dust. We
would not put fossils outside.” I keep a straight face as the victory bell
tolls in my head. I know that there are mammal fossils in those rocks,
and this is my chance to get some. Unfortunately, it is dark and the rain
is coming down in thick streams; it has turned the path to the car into a
muddy stream.
“OK,” I say, “we will come back tomorrow and get some blocks from
the heap.”
“That is no problem,” she says. “What time?”
“Between nine and ten,” I shout, over the rain and to penetrate her
failing ears.
“I will serve you breakfast,” she says.
The mood in the car is jubilant. We stop and buy beer and whiskey,
ready to celebrate. Raju calls his wife, asking her to get snacks ready.
Then a cellphone rings. Raju answers. The conversation is in Hindi. He
puts the phone away. “Not good news,” he says.
Before Whales | 195
I sit in suspense while we drive, arrive, and start our party. I try to
read Raju’s mind but cannot. It kills me, but I have to let the Indian rules
of hospitality run their course. We are his guests: he decides what to do
next. Much later, with full bellies and empty glasses, he explains that the
servant in the wool hat has told the Frau that there are indeed fossils in
the heap, not just rocks. As a result, she has changed her mind—we are
not to take any, tomorrow’s meeting is canceled. The mood of the party
changes, first to despair, but then to a reassessment of strategy. I want to
go visit her, alone this time, and talk to her, in German. If she does not
trust Indians, that is her issue. I am not Indian, she should trust me. The
Indian colleagues agree.
However, I will not be able to persuade the servants to open the gate
for me. We decide that Dr. Raju’s wife will come with me. She is a sweet
and kind woman, young looking, but with a son who is in his thirties.
She also knows Frau Obergfell, and speaks English, albeit enriched with
some native grammar and accents.
“She will not yield,” is her assessment.
“I have ‘no’ now,” I answer. “The worst that can happen is that I get
more ‘no’.”
I practice what I want to tell her, four or five times, in German, avoid-
ing words which I do not remember in that language: “to trust” and “to
deceive.” I drive through Dehradun for hours and eventually find a bot-
tle of wine as a gift to mollify her.
Unannounced, Mrs. Raju and I drive to the house, riding in silence,
both of us tense. She is dressed in a black and gray sari, a very impracti-
cal and beautiful garment that is basically a long stretch of fabric that is
wrapped around the body using a complex set of folds, tucks, and
creases. Just about any movement may result in dissolution of the
ensemble, and one hand should be kept free to check such immodesty
from unfolding.
The gate is locked. Mrs. Raju calls the names of the servants and we
honk the horn, but no one comes. We wait for thirty minutes, and try
again. No response. Mrs. Raju, age and sari notwithstanding, now
climbs across the rough three-foot brick fence, steadying herself with
one hand while controlling the sari with the other. She disappears
toward the house. Fifteen minutes pass and she returns. A female serv-
ant has told her that madam is sick and cannot be disturbed: she has
been upset and unable to sleep. We decide to give up. I will just leave her
the wine and my card. Just then the servant in the wool hat comes home
with fresh vegetables from the market. Mrs. Raju talks to him, and they
196 | Chapter 14
both climb over the fence and disappear. My patience is tried for another
fifteen minutes, and then the gate swings open. Battle half-won.
The house is dark, and madam is a small bundle of blankets on the
couch. But feisty she remains, launching into another diatribe about
people stealing from her. I sit in silence, not finding room to interject,
and not knowing what to interject. Mrs. Raju takes the initiative, rais-
ing her voice to be heard. She makes the same very uncomfortable point,
time and time again. “You just trust Raju and this man only,” she says,
comparing her husband and myself favorably to the rest of humanity.
Her little finger sweeps the air, describing the lower half of a circle, a
typical Indian gesture of emphasis.
The Frau is not convinced. I interject some of my points, but skip the
German. “Professor Dehm gave his word of honor to leave Australia; I
do, too. I am Dutch, you can trust my word of honor, even if all these
Indians are bad people.”
“You work with Indians, yes?” the Frau shoots at me.
“Yes, I work with Indians studying fossil whales in Gujarat, it is nec-
essary. You were married to an Indian, yes?”
“You cannot trust them. No Indian can study these fossils. I do not
understand your hurry. You have other things you study, why do you
want to work on these fossils now? I will not give them up. The fossils
stay.”
“When you die, the Indians will take these stones and throw them
into the river. For them, these are just stones—they are not paleontolo-
gists like you and me.”
“Why don’t you study other fossils with your Indians?”
“This is an important collecti
on. Your husband’s work is not com-
pleted. These fossils need to be studied.”
Mrs. Raju breaks in again, adjusting the pillow to support the Frau’s
back. She complains loudly, but it does not stop Mrs. Raju.
“The heap will not go anywhere. You can study it later, when the
trust is in effect.”
“Those fossils are in the rain and sun. They are eroding. They are
being destroyed.”
She sags back on her side, a tear in her blue eye. I don’t think it is
emotion, but I don’t know.
“I want to take two blocks from the heap. If there are fossils, I will
extract them. I have a preparator. I will return what I find to you next
year. You have my word of honor that I will return them. You have
nothing to lose. All I will take is two stones, and they are worth nothing
Before Whales | 197
now, you have said so yourself. I will return them, and then you will see
that you can trust me.”
Mrs. Raju again interrupts. “You trust Tewson, he is not an Indian.”
My name is difficult for her, but I like the accent.
“Why do you not prepare them here?” the Frau asks, and Mrs. Raju
throws me a look that asks the same question.
“It takes fancy equipment, water, electricity. It is not fast. It cannot be
done here.”
“I cannot guarantee water. It is often interrupted. The city does not
provide.”
I repeat my planned speech about my word of honor being as good
as that of Dehm.
“How did you find out about this collection? Who told you? No one
knows about it except the Indians.”
I had foreseen that one. “I heard it first from Dr. Neil Wells, who
visited Ranga Rao in Dehradun a long time ago, twenty years ago, to see
the collection.”
“Who?”
“Dr. Neil Wells. Neil Wells. ”
“Who?”
“NEIL WELLS.”
“Newell? I don’t know a Newell.”
Mrs. Raju jumps in. “Nejl Wehls.” In unison, she and I chant the
name, as if it were a god’s name like the ones incessantly chanted in the
nearby temples by revelers asking for favors: “Hare Ram, Hare Ram,
Hare Ram.” We, too, are praying for favors, and the slapstick aspect of
this visit is not lost on me. However, right now, I must not smile. Finally,
she hears and understands.
“Him I do not know, but it is possible, I may have forgotten if he has
visited us.”
She sits up and launches into another tirade against Indians. How the
carpenter stole her stuff. How the workmen took the teacups she
imported from Germany, and her Chinese porcelain. “No fossil will
leave. I cannot trust anyone.”
“You have my word of honor. Does my word of honor mean noth-
ing? Are you saying I am a liar?”
Mrs. Raju goes again. “You trust two people, Raju and this man.”
Her light-blue eyes suddenly look straight at me now, framed by the
pale wrinkled face. “Why don’t you take a sack and take some stones
from the heap. Put them in your suitcase, do not show them to any
198 | Chapter 14
Indian, and return them when you come again. I have no objection. You
I can trust.”
I am shocked into silence. Somehow my own proposal has been
turned around as if it were her command. I missed the switch.
“It will take time to extract the fossils. I leave for the U.S. in seven
days. I will return them when I come to India again—I come every year.”
“I do not doubt that you are honest, but no Indian should be
involved.”
“This is not a problem. I will put them in my suitcase. I will get the
bag and the blocks, and come back to the house to show you what I
took.”
“You do not need to show me. I trust you.”
I race over to the heap, which is slippery from yesterday’s rain, and
quickly make my choice before she changes her mind. This batch is for
the principle, not the fossils. Bahadur, the Nepalese servant with the
wool hat, comes and helps. He sees a stone with a tooth. He’s got good
eyes and seems happy to help me.
I take the bag back to the house, but she does not want to see its
contents. Satisfied, and full of hope, I leave Dehradun, and then India.
the ancestors of whales
The fossils are prepared, and I duly return them the next year, getting
more blocks to take to the United States. Eventually jaws and thighbones,
astragali and hipbones emerge from their ancient rocky prison. The vast
majority are of the same species, a raccoon-sized artiodactyl called Indo-
hyus which is closely related to Khirtharia from Pakistan. Indohyus was
originally discovered by Ranga Rao when he found a few jaws of the
animal in these rocks.2 Most important are the skulls. We have four of
them. My new preparator, Rick, is very patient with them and does a
beautiful job, scraping the purple and gray sediment out of the tiniest
cracks without hurting the bright white bone. I check on his progress
daily, and we talk about which block to work on next. Rick has been deaf
since birth, and our conversations are a mix of enunciating exaggeratedly,
repeating, and pointing, with his eyes jumping from the fossils to my lips
as he lip-reads. Then, one day as I walk into the prep lab, Rick apologizes
for having broken a piece off one of the skulls. The break is straight, and
no pieces were lost, so it is easily glued back, he says. It is not uncommon
for bones to break during preparation, and as long as the break is clean,
fixing them is not a big deal. As I look at the skull, I realize that the bone
Before Whales | 199
RR 208
RR 601
skull seen in side view
skull seen
from below
involucrum
RR 207
sediment infill of middle ear broken-off
seen from below
tympanic
RR 209
bone
snout
palate
left and right tympanic bone
figure 63. Fossil skulls of Indohyus. RR 208 shows the broken tympanic
discussed in the text.
that broke is the tympanic. It snapped right throu
gh the middle, exposing
the sediment-filled middle ear cavity. To my shock, the inside wall of the
tympanic is much thicker than the outside. Indohyus had an involucrum,
just like whales—an amazing discovery brought about by Rick’s accident
(figure 63). We’re not gluing this one back!
Now the work takes on a frantic pace, and, in 2007, we are ready to
publish. Then, in July, news reaches me that Dr. Friedlinde Obergfell has
died. It is sad that she died just short of the recognition for her husband’s
fossils that she sought for thirty years. She leaves all her belongings to the
trust that is dedicated to Ranga Rao’s fossils, and to my great surprise
appoints me as the main person studying the fossils. Following her wishes,
she is buried on her property wearing the army jacket of her first husband
and a shalwar, thin, loose-fitting Indian pants. I correspond with her rela-
tives in Europe, and travel to south India to see her husband’s relatives. In
December of that year, we publish our work on Indohyus. 3
indohyus
Indohyus (figure 64) is part of a small band of artiodactyls that consti-
tutes the family Raoellidae, named in honor of Ranga Rao by Ashok
Sahni. For nearly all of them, only teeth are known, and the skull and
skeleton are only known for one genus of raoellid: Indohyus. All known
skulls and bones came from the blocks in Ranga Rao’s yard in Dehradun.
200 | Chapter 14
figure 64. The skeleton of Indohyus. Parts that were not discovered are shaded.
Reprinted from J. G. M. Thewissen, L. N. Cooper, M. T. Clementz, S. Bajpai, and B.
N. Tiwari, “Whales Originated from Aquatic Artiodactyls in the Eocene Epoch of
India,” Nature 450 (2007): 1190–94.
These animals looked like a tiny, somewhat heavy-set deer (figure 65).
Indeed, mouse deer are similar: they are very small modern artiodactyls
( Tragulus and Hyemoschus) that live deep in the forests of Central Africa
and Southeast Asia.
Raoellids are only known from South Asia, Pakistan, and India
(figure 22)—there is a questionable record from Myanmar.4 The oldest
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