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San people painted the rock art panel between 1821 and 1835, he estimates.
тАЬThe tusked animal painting may represent a rain animal, a fantastic creature linked to San rain-making folklore,тАЭ says Benoit, of University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
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![This drawing in black and reddish brown shows an elegonated, speckled creature with what could be two long tusks curving down from its head.]()
While the cave art paint has faded, this is what the mythical creature painted on a rock-shelter wall in South Africa looked like. J. Benoit/PLOS ONE 2024 -
![This black-and-white drawing shows the head of a tusked dicynodont peering out from some vegetation. The creature is now extinct.]()
This black-and-white drawing reconstructs what a tusked dicynodont may have looked like when it roamed Earth more than 200 million years ago. Marlene Hill Donnelly
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.
Dicynodonts generally lived from around 270 million to nearly 200 million years ago. Researchers have found San stone tools on several eroding outcrops containing dicynodont fossils. Those sites lie within 100 kilometers of the Horned Serpent panel.
Few clues exist about the extent to which Indigenous Africans have collected animal fossils and incorporated them into spiritual beliefs and rock art (SN: 10/5/96).
At LesothoтАЩs Mokhali Cave, located near preserved dinosaur footprints and fossils, San rock art includes a dinosaur footprint outline and three dinosaur silhouettes. As astute footprint interpreters, San people discerned that these creatures left no handprints or tail drag marks (SN: 6/11/15). Dinosaur silhouettes thus lacked arms and sported short tails, Benoit says.
