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San people painted the rock art panel between 1821 and 1835, he estimates.
“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.
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 Lesotho’s 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.