Ancient San rock art reveals earliest known depiction of extinct Dicynodont
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 8-Aug-2025 04:11 ET (8-Aug-2025 08:11 GMT/UTC)
A 200 year old painting in a cave on the La Belle France farm in the Free State province of South Africa, may be the world's oldest known piece of paleo-art depicting an extinct mammal-like reptile called a dicynodont, predating the creature's official scientific discovery by at least a decade.
Professor Julien Benoit, a palaeontologist at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University), has reinterpreted this mysterious rock art, that has previously been misidentified as a walrus-like creature or even a surviving sabre-toothed cat. He identified the animal in the image as a Dicynodont, that lived between 265 and 200 million years ago.A new report ‘Eating Wild Animals: Rewards, Risks and Recommendations’ led by experts of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) uncovers the perils and promise of wild meat hunting, consumption and trade in Africa and Southeast Asia.
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