Pleistocene fossil snake traces on South Africa’s Cape south coast

Abstract

Snakes form a large, familiar, and distinctive component of the world’s reptile fauna, with a rich body fossil record stretching back to the Jurassic. The sparse, minimal, and questionable evidence of snake traces in the ichnological record is therefore surprising. Extant snakes in southern Africa employ three types of locomotion—rectilinear, sidewinding, and undulatory, all of which result in distinctive, recognizable traces. A site exhibiting convincing evidence of rectilinear motion, probably made by a puff adder, has been identified in Pleistocene aeolianites on South Africa’s Cape south coast. A new ichnogenus and ichnospecies, Anguinichnus linearis, have been erected to describe this trace. A new suite of optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) ages from aeolianites from the De Kelders Cave locality, 1.4 km to the south, suggests that the site dates to ∼93–83 ka. Trace fossil evidence of sidewinding and undulatory motion is more equivocal and open to alternative interpretations.