Africa: Lion Tracks From the Ice Age - How Two Ways of Seeing Brought Ancient Animals to Life

What the report says

Researchers writing in The Conversation Africa say new analysis of fossilised tracks on South Africa’s southern Cape coast is helping reconstruct what animals lived there during the Pleistocene, when the shoreline and sea level were very different from today. The landscape at the tip of Africa periodically exposed the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain, creating habitat for large mammals, and the team says it has now identified more than 400 vertebrate tracksites in the region since 2008.

In work published recently, the researchers focused on lion tracks at three sites. They say two Ju/'hoansi San trackers from Namibia’s Nyae Nyae Conservancy, working with the Cape South Coast Ichnology Project at Nelson Mandela University, helped confirm the identifications and interpret animal behaviour from faint prints that modern scientists found difficult to read on their own. The article describes one site as showing a lion in a crouched position, another as likely containing tracks from both a male and a female lion, and a third as another confirmed lion tracksite.

According to the authors, these are the only reported fossil lion tracksites in southern Africa, and only one of the three Cape examples has been dated so far, to about 70,000 years ago. The article says lions are no longer found in the area. It presents the findings as an example of how scientific methods and Indigenous tracking knowledge can be combined to expand understanding of ancient ecosystems.

The authors say the collaboration will continue, with planned work on possible hominin tracks and evidence of the extinct bloubok antelope. The broader significance, they write, is that tracks can preserve behaviour as well as presence, adding detail to the region’s ancient wildlife record.