Sunil Bajpai predominantly works on the
Cenozoic vertebrates of India with focus on marine mammals, such as whales and sea cows.[3][4][5][6] Bajpai and his collaborators fossil discoveries from the Eocene of Kutch (
Gujarat) and the Himalayas have helped in understanding how whales have evolved.[3][4] Bajpai also works on land mammals, which includes the early representatives of horses, artiodactyls, and primates, such as the stem perissodactyl family
Cambaytheriidae, artiodactyl Gujaratia, and primates such as the adapoid Marcgodinotius and the omomyid Vastanomys.[7][8][9] Additionally, he has worked on many other fossil vertebrates such as sharks, bony fishes, frogs, snakes, lizards, insectivores, rodents, etc.[10][11][12] He has also been involved in studies of latest
Cretaceous-
Paleocene faunas of the Deccan volcanic province of India and their implications in understanding the northward drift of the Indian tectonic plate.[13]
In 2023, Bajpai and colleagues reported on Tharosaurus indicus, India's first
dicraeosaurid dinosaur, from the
Thar Desert of Jaisalmer, Rajasthan state, western India. The fossils were unearthed from Middle Jurassic outcrops of the
Jaisalmer Formation. The taxon likely represents the oldest known record of this group and, seen in conjunction with previously known early Jurassic sauropods from India (Barapasaurus, Kotasaurus), suggests that what is now India may have been a major centre for neosauropod evolution.[14]
Education
Bajpai carried out his Ph.D. studies in
Paleontology from the Centre of Advanced Study in Geology,
Panjab University, Chandigarh, in 1990.[15]
Bajpai, Sunil; Kay, Richard F.; Williams, Blythe A.; Das, Debasis P.; Kapur, Vivesh V.; Tiwari, B. N. (2008). "The oldest Asian record of Anthropoidea". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. 105 (32): 11093–11098.
doi:10.1073/pnas.0804159105.
ISSN 0027-8424.
Bajpai, S.; Sahni, A. (2009). "India's fossil biota: Current perspectives and Emerging Approaches". Journal of Biosciences. 34 (5, special issue).
doi:
10.1007/s12038-009-0082-7.
^Swami, Narendra K.; Ernst, Andrej; Tripathi, Satish C.; Barman, Prasenjit; Bharti, S.K.; Rana, Y.P. (2019). "A new cryptostome bryozoan Ptilotrypa from the Upper Ordovician Yong Limestone Formation: Tethyan sequence of Kumaun Higher Himalaya, India". Journal of Paleontology. 93 (3): 585–591.
Bibcode:
2019JPal...93..585S.
doi:
10.1017/jpa.2018.94.
ISSN0022-3360.
S2CID135358848.
^Khosla, S. C.; Nagori, M. L. (2007). "Ostracoda from the Inter-trappean Beds of Mohgaon-Haveli, Chhindwara District, Madhya Pradesh". Journal of the Geological Society of India.
S2CID134191312.