Indigenous painting may portray a long extinct creature that appeared before the first dinosaurs, a study found.

A mysterious tusked animal depicted in South African rock art might portray an ancient species preserved as fossils in the same region, according to a study published September 18, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Julien Benoit of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Indigenous people in southern Africa may have been painting long-extinct creatures from 260 million years ago, even before Western archaeologists described the fossils. In a thought-provoking new paper,

In the Karoo Basin of South Africa, an unusual tusked beast is painted on a rock wall. Archaeologists have previously pondered whether the artwork depicts a mythical creature from the realm of fantasy,