Sankar Chatterjee (born May 28, 1943) is apaleontologist, the Paul W. Horn Professor ofGeosciences atTexas Tech University and curator of Paleontology at theMuseum of Texas Tech University.^[1] He earned hisPhD from theUniversity of Calcutta in 1970, and was a postdoctoral fellow at theSmithsonian Institution from 1977-1978.^[2]

Chatterjee has focused on the origin, evolution, functional anatomy, and systematics ofMesozoic vertebrates, includingbasalarchosaurs,dinosaurs,pterosaurs, andbirds.^[3] He has researchedLate Triassic reptiles inIndia, such asphytosaurs,rhynchosaurs, andprolacertiformes. He is best known for his work on vertebrates recovered in the 1980s from the Post Quarry in the Late TriassicCooper Canyon Formation (Dockum Group) ofWest Texas. The material includes the large rauisuchianPostosuchus, which was named for the nearby town ofPost. It also included controversial specimens Chatterjee identified as being avian (Protoavis). The identification of these specimens as avian would push back the origin of birds by at least 75 million years.^[4]

In 2008, Chatterjee and Rick Lind designed a 30-inchunmanned aerial vehicle with a large, thinrudder inspired by thecrest ofTupandactylus, to be called a Pterodrone.^[5]The large, thin, rudder-like sail on its head functioned as a sensory organ that acted similarly to a flight computer in a modern-day aircraft and also helped with the animal's turning agility. “These animals take the best parts of bats and birds,” Chatterjee said. “They had the maneuverability of a bat, but could glide like an albatross. Nothing alive today compares to the performance and agility of these animals. They lived for 160 million years, so they were not stupid animals. The skies were darkened by flocks of them. They were the dominant flying animals of their time. [… W]e’ve found they could actually sail on the wind for very long periods as they flew over the oceans… By raising their wings like sails on a boat, they could use the slightest breeze in the same way a catamaran moves across water. They could take off quickly and fly long distances with little effort.”^[6]

Chatterjee authored the controversial hypothesis of theShiva crater in the Arabian Sea as a (partial) source of theK-Pg extinction event.

These genera were named by Chatterjee:

Name	Year	Status	Coauthor(s)	Notes / Image
Alwalkeria	1994	Valid taxon	Creisler
Barapasaurus	1975	Valid taxon	Jain Kutty Roy-Chowdhury
Jaklapallisaurus[7]	2011	Valid taxon	Fernando E. Novas Martin D. Ezcurra Kutty
Lamplughsaura	2007	Valid taxon	Kutty Peter Galton Upchurch
Nambalia[7]	2011	Valid taxon	Fernando E. Novas Martin D. Ezcurra Kutty
Postosuchus	1985	Valid taxon	N/A
Pradhania	2007	Valid taxon	Kutty Peter Galton Upchurch
Protoavis[8]	1991	nomen dubium	N/A
Shuvosaurus	1993	Valid taxon	N/A
Technosaurus	1995	Valid taxon	N/A
Tikisuchus	1987	Valid taxon	Pranab K. Majumdar
Walkeria	1987	Preoccupied	N/A	Name preoccupied by abryozoan, renamedAlwalkeria in1994

• Chatterjee, Sankar (August 1997)."Multiple Impacts at the KT Boundary and the Death of the Dinosaurs".30th International Geological Congress. Vol. 26. pp. 31–54.ISBN 978-90-6764-254-5. Retrieved2008-02-22.
• Chatterjee, Sankar (15 October 2009)."Giant Impact Near India -- Not Mexico -- May Have Doomed Dinosaurs".2009 Annual GSA Meeting, 18–21 October. The Geological Society of America Release No. 09-54. Archived fromthe original on 16 June 2010. Retrieved13 August 2010.
• Chatterjee, Sankar; Mehrotra, Naresh M. (18 October 2009). "The Significance of the Contemporaneous Shiva Impact Structure and Deccan Volcanism at the KT Boundary".2009 Portland GSA Annual Meeting (18-21 October 2009). pp. 50–9. Archived fromthe original on 6 April 2010. Retrieved13 August 2010.

• Chatterjee, Sankar;Hotton III, Nicholas, eds. (1992).New concepts in global tectonics. Lubbock, USA: Texas Tech University Press. p. 450.ISBN 0-8967-2269-4.
• Chatterjee, Sankar (1997).The Rise of Birds. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 312.
• Chatterjee, Sankar; Templin, RJ (2004).Special Paper: Posture, Locomotion, and Paleoecology of Pterosaurs. Vol. 376. Boulder, CO: The Geological Society of America. pp. 64 + iv.ISBN 0-8137-2376-0.

• 1943 births
• Living people
• American paleontologists
• Texas Tech University faculty
• University of Calcutta alumni
• Scientists from West Bengal
• 20th-century American biologists
• 20th-century Indian biologists

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