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.
It appears to show a long-bodied animal with downward-turned tusks that looks unlike any living animal in the region today.
A rock painting and unidentified fossils discovered in South Africa may confirm the existence of a legendary ‘horned serpent’
The paintings are about ten years older than the first formal scientific descriptions of this horned serpent, which were made in 1845
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 Triassic 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.
The Horned Serpent Panel
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 fictitious creature, but rather documenting a scientific finding.
Benoit told IFLScience that ‘many cultures explored the world of fossils before Western scientists did.’
The rock painting was discovered at La Belle France, a rock-art site in northern South Africa
The fossils were found beneath the star in photo A, and fossils were found at the locations shown in photos B, C and D.
‘The Native Americans knew about fossils before colonization and interpreted them in various ways, some implying they knew they belonged to long-gone animals,’ he said.
‘The San, in southern Africa, also collected fossils, as exemplified by the Bolahla rock shelter, in which they carried a dinosaur phalanx – which may be, by the way, the first time a dinosaur bone was ever discovered,’ he added.
What’s more, the painting of a dicynodont by the San would also suggest that they integrated at least some fossils into their belief system, according to the study.
‘During rain-making ceremonies, the San enter a state of trance and enter the realm of the dead to catch rain-animals and bring the rain back to the world of the living,’ he said.
‘By picking a species such as a dicynodont, that they knew was extinct and thus dead, they likely hoped this rain-animal had some increased potency to bridge the two worlds,’ he added.
But this painting alone is not enough to officially confirm that this legendary horned serpent actually existed, or that the unidentified fossils found at La Belle France are its remains.
It will take additional research to determine whether this ancient monster was fact or fiction.
