African rock art depicting a mythical tusked creature may mirror the look of fossils of real-life ancient mammal relatives called dicynodonts.
Abundant, exposed fossils in South Africa’s Karoo Basin include dicynodont skulls with tusks that curve down and back, like those of the long-bodied animal depicted in roughly 200-year-old rock art by the region’s San hunter-gatherers, says paleontologist Julien Benoit. That painting appears among images drawn on a rock-shelter wall, dubbed the Horned Serpent panel, which include a scene of ethnic warfare known to have occurred as early as 1821, Benoit reports September 18 in PLOS ONE.
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