Horned Serpent May Depict a Dicynodont Fossil in South African Rock Art

Indigenous communities in southern Africa may have portrayed creatures that had been extinct for 260 million years before Western archaeologists formally described their fossils.

In a compelling new paper, evolutionary biologist Julien Benoit proposes that the rock art at La Belle France, in South Africa’s Free State Province, represents a neglected example of Indigenous palaeontology.

He suggests that an image of a tusked animal, painted almost two centuries ago, is unlikely to be an invented beast. Instead, it may recreate an animal that lived in the area more than 260 million years ago.

The Horned Serpent and dicynodont fossils

The animal shown in the painting is elongated and slender, giving the rock-art panel its name: the Horned Serpent.

Benoit, of the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, interprets it differently. In his view, the figure resembles a dicynodont: a toothless, tusked, four-legged ancestor of modern mammals. Dicynodont fossils are both plentiful and highly visible across the Karoo Basin.

Some have called this basin a "palaeontological wonderland". It extends across much of present-day South Africa, though the fossils preserved there date from before the Gondwana supercontinent split apart.

Benoit contends that the rock-wall image of the tusked creature, created by the ǀXam-ka ǃʼē people, may be a ‘geomyth’ - an oral or written tradition that explains geological events and phenomena, including fossils and natural landscape features.

The arch of the animal’s spine resembles the ‘death pose’ frequently found in fossilised dicynodont remains.

"The painting was made in 1835 at the latest, which means this dicynodont was depicted at least ten years before the western scientific discovery and naming of the first dicynodont by Richard Owen in 1845," says Benoit.

"This work supports that the first inhabitants of southern Africa… discovered fossils, interpreted them and integrated them in their rock art and belief system."

Indigenous palaeontology in southern Africa

As reported by The New York Times, Benoit initially spotted the similarity between the Horned Serpent and a dicynodont in a book published in the 1930s. After visiting the original artwork, he identified several exposed dicynodont fossils nearby.

Southern Africa’s Indigenous cultures are collectively known as San. Colonial accounts describe a local San myth about huge animals, larger than hippos or elephants, which once wandered through the region.

Archaeological evidence now indicates that the ancestors of the San located fossils of this kind and carried them across considerable distances.

In a 2019 paper, Benoit, palaeontologist Charles Helm and several colleagues said there was a "rich, underappreciated body of evidence for Indigenous awareness of fossils and geological phenomena."

They predicted that a "diverse non-western, Indigenous palaeontological and geomythological heritage will probably become evident in southern Africa."

For Benoit, the Karoo painting of the tusked animal is the first fully developed example of that idea. The ǀXam-ka ǃʼē people may have viewed dicynodont skulls as the remains of animals that had once been alive, incorporating them into both their art and worldview.

Evidence and competing interpretations

The downwards-curving tusks in the Horned Serpent panel point in the same direction as those of dicynodonts, unlike the tusks of elephants and warthogs. Indeed, no living African animal has tusks of this kind.

"The skin of the tusked animal is dotted," writes Benoit, "which is not unusual in San rock art, but is also consistent with the warty mummified skin preserved in some dicynodont fossils in the area."

Benoit’s interpretation will almost certainly prompt substantial debate about whether ancient cultures could reconstruct whole animals from fossils. Suggestions that protoceratop fossils inspired griffin myths, for instance, have recently been criticised by researchers who cite insufficient supporting evidence.

The painting might instead show a seal consuming a fish, or a land animal eating a snake. Benoit argues, however, that the U-shape is too short for either reading. Snakes and fish in San rock art also tend to have more distinctive features, while the lines are too thick to represent whiskers or blood.

"Even if one considers that the Horned Serpent panel has a purely spiritual meaning, it does not invalidate the hypothesis that the tusked animal itself may have been imagined based on a dicynodont fossil," argues Benoit.

"The spiritual and paleontological interpretation of this painting are not mutually exclusive."

The study appeared in PLOS ONE.