This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: The coastline near the southern tip of Africa looked vastly different between about 400,000 years ago and 70,000 years ago, compared with today. At times it lay as much as 100km (62 miles) south of its present location, exposing the vast Palaeo-Agulhas Plain, which contained an extensive habitat for large mammals.
At other times the sea level was briefly as much as 13 meters (43 feet) higher than today's mean level. Through our work as ichnologists (involving the study of fossil tracks and traces) and in combination with the regional body fossil record, we are building a picture of the animals that populated the region in that distant past. Since 2008 our team of fossil hunters has identified more than 400 vertebrate tracksites in this southern Cape area of South Africa.
We search for the fossilized tracks that creatures made thousands of years ago on sandy surfaces which have since hardened into rock. The Pleistocene (2.58 million to 11,700 years ago) is close enough to the present to allow modern tracking guidebooks to be used as an aid to identifying what made the tracks, though the body fossil record shows that certain Pleistocene animals have become extinct. In 2024 we decided to focus on lion tracks.
Although a well-preserved adult lion track is unmistakable, in many cases tracks are not that well preserved. This is where the expertise of our San colleagues #oma Daqm and /uce Nǂamce was invaluable. They are expert wildlife trackers from Namibia's Kalahari Desert.
At three fossil tracksites on the southern Cape coast, they were able to confirm or identify the tracks of large felids ("big cats") from the Pleistocene Epoch and add their interpretation of the animals' behavior. Their Indigenous knowledge and diagnostic acumen pushed the boundaries of our collective capability as scientists. The results have recently been published.
These are the only reported fossilized lion tracksites in southern Africa. And in the whole of Africa there is only one other reported lion tracksite (in Tanzania). Only one of the three Cape tracks has been dated so far, to about 70,000 years ago.
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