The blue stingray’s disc-like shape would have made it ideal for tracing.
Kyle Smith
The sculpture might have begun with tracing a blue stingray specimen in the sand.
Puff adders leave linear, sometimes slightly undulating traces.
EcoPrint/Shutterstock
The trace was probably made between 93,000 and 83,000 years ago, almost certainly by a puff adder.
Possible shod hominin tracks in the Garden Route National Park, South Africa.
Charles Helm
Trackway findings support the notion of southern Africa being one region where human cognitive and practical ability developed a very long time ago.
The oldest known footprint of our species, lightly ringed with chalk. It appears long and narrow because the trackmaker dragged their heel.
Charles Helm
This was an area in which early anatomically modern humans survived, evolved and thrived, before spreading out of Africa to other continents.
An illustration of two giant Cape zebras alongside a much smaller plains zebra.
Maggie Newman
It hasn’t been clear how common the species was on the Cape south coast because its body fossils are predominantly from southern Africa’s west coast.
Today, leopard tortoises are the largest species found on the Cape south coast.
Ava Peattie/Shutterstock
Track marks are a way to fill in the blanks that sometimes exist in the body fossil record.
A helicopter, net and a long-line cable - as well as a skilled pilot - were key to the ‘rescue’ operation.
Richard Webb
Without intervention, the rock may have been destroyed by high tides and storm surges.
Ancestors of modern-day Cape fur seals left distinctive fossil traces thanks partly to their flippers.
Stuart on Nature/Stuart on Nature
The fossilised seal traces date back about 75,000 years.