[Rockhounds] Fossils of an extinct animal may have inspired this cave art drawing

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

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
<https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309908> 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*.

“The tusked animal painting may represent a rain animal, a fantastic
creature linked to San rain-making folklore,” says Benoit, of University of
the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

San myths describe large animals that once inhabited southern Africa before
disappearing. If dicynodont fossils influenced painters of the tusked rock
art figure, then that portrayal preceded the first scientific description
of dicynodonts in 1845.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/fossils-extinct-animal-cave-art