Mysooru Nagaraja Sharma told reporters here on Monday that stone, mud and clay implements found at the site are of the late Neolithic Age (about 2000 BC) and as recent as the Iron Age (1000 BC to 100 AD).

The Cauvery flows at a distance of 8 km from this site, says Sharma. Satellite pictures procured from the Indian Space Research Organisation also appear to suggest that the Cauvery flowed close to the Neolithic site and later changed its course. ``This will be conclusively proved within the next 10 days,'' said Sharma.

The site resembles other Neolithic sites such as the ones in Narsipur and Hemmige (in the same district).

Implements displayed by Sharma resemble ground axes made out of stone, hand-made pottery, piecesof moulded clay, and so on. A terracotta piece, Sharma claimed, was used as a head-rest for the dead at burial. Such head-rests were found in the Egyptian pyramids, he added.

Churhat claims contested

LUCKNOW:Indian scientists are contesting recent claims of an Indo-German team having found fossils of billion-year-old burrowing worms near Churhat in Madhya Pradesh for the first time, saying Indian geologists had made similar discoveries nearly 35 years ago.

``It is either their (the Indo-German team's) sheer negligence or ignorance that they did not take into account the work done in this regard by Indian scientists in the Vindhyan rocks,'' Dr P K Maithy, deputy director general of Birbal Sahni Institute of Paleobotany (BSIP), and Dr Surendra Kumar, senior geologist at Lucknow University, told PTI here.

Maithy said the 1100-million-year-old fossils of multicellular worms found in Churhat sandstones, which was reported by Adolf Seilacher, F Pfluger and Pradeep Bose in a recent issue of thejournal `Science', was not the first case from the Vindhyan sediments.

Earlier, published records clearly showed the presence of trace fossils showing metazoan (multicellular) activities in Kaimur sediments, dating to 900 million years ago.

Few of the specimens shown by the Indo-German team are similar to these while others are paired dot-like, small rounded structures preserved in a row.

Maithy said additional surface trails, burrows and structures have been described in detail from Bhander in the Vindhyas in the State, besides old reports of trace fossils from the same region.