Conservation and Development of Pre-Historic Geosites and Tourism

History has always been a perennial source of man's keen curiosity and great interest. An ever-growing significance of Geosites, museums, monuments and sites of archaeological importance, the world over, is evidence to it. The tremendously growing tourism industry, in fact, has its origin in this very fact. Of late, alongside the concept of theme parks, the innovative idea of exploring the important sites revealing specific events (climatic, tectonic, thermal, magmatic, geomorphic, extra-telluric etc.) through geological history or associated with the evolution of mankind and the present day biodiversity as well, through the earth history of 4.6 billion years and also using them as a potential tourist resource is steadily getting ground. If exploration of prehistoric geosites and development of important sites for information, education and awareness of people could be judiciously integrated with tourism promotion, it may have synergistic implications as the sites would act as a unique touristic appeal and the tourism itself will support the former concept financially and otherwise, as well. India, on account of its unique geological history vis-a-vis physiographic, biotic and geoheritage manifestations of varied geo-events and consequently meteorological differences prevailing in, is one of the richest repository of varied geo-heritage sites including bio-sites studded with record and documentation of evolutionary lineages essentially needed to unravel the history of earth and understanding the palaeo-prevailed environmental scenario through earth's history and intensity of natural processes operating upon ever since the earth's origin. The present paper aims at comprehensively examining the prehistoric geosites in India, in an attempt to identify some of the areas with richer heritage in this regard. Some of the geologically more important sites with rich geoheritage and also prominent areas of tourism promotion are discussed in this paper, so as to conserve this invaluable treasure of earth history in the today's era of squeezing space on the face of rapid Industrialization and infra-structural developmental activities.