An archaeologist has uncovered a 200-year-old rock painting that depicts an ancient, horned serpent roaming across the land.
This discovery adds to a growing body of evidence that suggests this mythical creature was more than just a legend.
Julien Benoit, a senior researcher at the University of the Witwatersrand, found the painting at La Belle France, a rock-art site in northern South Africa.
Analysis revealed that they were made between 1821 and 1835 by an indigenous group called the San.
According to San legend, this creature was a ‘rain animal’ from the ‘spirit realm,’ which means it was probably involved in rain-making ceremonies, Benoit told IFLScience.
But scientists, including Benoit, believe it’s possible that this myth was based on real dicynodont fossils.
Dicynodontia is an extinct clade of terrestrial herbivores that typically bore a pair of tusks. Hence their name, which means ‘two dog tooth.’ They roamed the Earth from the Middle Permian through the end of the Triᴀssic periods.
They likely died out during the end-Permian extinction that wiped out most other therapsids – the larger clade of terrestrial animals that Dicynodontia belongs to.
An abundance of dicynodont fossils have been found in the Karoo Basin, a sedimentary basin that spans 60,000 square miles across the central and southern South Africa.
La Belle France, where the painting was uncovered, is located north of the Karoo Basin. But the painting was found in the immediate vicinity of unknown tetrapod (or four-legged vertebrate) fossils.
Benoit published his findings this month in the journal PLOS ONE.
He thinks that a fossil discovery could have led the San to paint the horned serpent, guided by an ancient legend in which their ancestors described these creatures as ‘great monstrous brutes, exceeding the elephant or hippopotamus in bulk,’ he said.
Together, the painting and nearby fossils ‘suggest a case of indigenous paleontology,’ Benoit wrote. Perhaps the San weren’t painting a ficтιтious creature, but rather documenting a scientific finding.
Benoit told IFLScience that ‘many cultures explored the world of fossils before Western scientists did.’
