S.B. Misra

Shiva Balak Misra is an Indian geologist, writer, social worker.

Misra is credited for his discovery of Fractofusus misrai - a fossil revealing mystery about beginning of life on earth some 560 mn years ago, discovered by him in June 1967 during his MS Thesis work at Mistaken Point, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada now better known as Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve after his discovery The discovery was named after him in 2007. The location of his Misra's discovery his was named a UNESCO World Heritage destination in 2016.

Misra is also well known for his contribution to the society. Having grown up in hardship in a poor family in small village near Lucknow in Northern India, Misra had to walk 24 kilometers each day for schooling. As a child he had a dream to start a school in his village which he nurtured lifelong and after his Masters in Canada when he was at the peak of his career having made the famous fossil discovery he decided to give up the career in West and come to India and start a school in his village which he runs until today.

In the summer of 1967, S.B.Misra an Indian graduate student (1966–69) from Memorial University of Newfoundland discovered a rich asssemblage of imprints of soft bodied organisms on the surface of large rock slabs in the Conception Group of Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland at Mistaken Point.

These unusual impressions of previously unknown soft-bodied sea animals on the surfaces of Argillite (mudstone) included coelenterates and other metazoa of the Ediacaran. Misra made the discovery during the course of geological mapping of the previously unmapped area of southeastern part of the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland. Misra was the first to prepare and present a systematic geological map of the region, to classify and describe the rock sequence of the area and to work out the depositional history of the rocks.

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