Lion tracks from the ice age: how two ways of seeing brought ancient animals to life

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 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 metres 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.

A charging Cape lion.

Artwork by Maggie Lambert-Newman (reproduced with permission from Grootbos Private Nature Reserve and the African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience),

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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 fossilised 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’ behaviour.

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 fossilised 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. Lions are no longer found in nature in this area.

Expert trackers

Our Cape South Coast Ichnology Project is based at the African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience at Nelson Mandela University. The research team got a major boost in 2023, when, thanks to the support of the Discovery Wilderness Trust, we were able to invite expert trackers from north-eastern Namibia to join us. These members of the Ju/’hoansi San community from the Nyae Nyae Conservancy practise their traditional tracking skills and are designated as Indigenous Master Trackers by the nonprofit environmental monitoring organisation CyberTracker.

Tracker #oma Daqm at the Goukamma lion tracksite.

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The trackers – #oma Daqm, /uce Nǂamce and the late Steve Kunta – have been co-authors on two science papers on Cape south coast Pleistocene discoveries: one on the only fossil pangolin trackway thus far reported, and the other on a fossil trackway of the brown hyena.

This time we needed their expertise on lion trackways.

First we took them to a known lion tracksite in the Goukamma Nature Reserve. Not only did they confirm our identification, but they also provided extra behavioural interpretation, including the presence of tracks of both a male and a female lion.

One of the lion tracks in the Goukamma Nature Reserve.

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Next, we visited a site in the De Hoop Nature Reserve where we had previously reached a tentative identification of lion tracks, but were far from certain. Our colleagues inspected the evidence, debated at length in Ju/‘hoan, and then provided their verdict: these were definitely lion tracks, suggestive of a lion in a crouched position, ready to pounce. This interpretation explained the set of two footprints next to each other, pointing in the same direction.

The Indigenous Master Trackers at the lion tracksite in the De Hoop Nature Reserve.

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A few days later we were on a remote stretch of the coastline, east of the small town of Witsand, examining a tracksite that had previously been found. We had been unable to identify the trackmaker, other than noting that it was a large animal.

Our San colleagues looked at the track-bearing surface, discussed it among themselves, and then declared it another lion tracksite, with evidence that both a male and a female lion had passed that way.

Thrill of tracking lions

Modern lion track.

Simon Sephton

The tracking of extant lions in Africa has developed its own mystique. Tracking the savannah’s apex predator is ranked by many as the peak tracking experience. The quest for Pleistocene lion tracks might be devoid of the danger inherent in tracking live lions, but there is nonetheless a thrill in finding tracks of the “king of beasts”.

The excitement is heightened by the possibility that the tracks were left by the extinct Cape lion (Panthera leo melanochaita), although its status as a distinct subspecies is debatable. While we cannot distinguish Cape lion tracks from those of other subspecies, the possibility is intriguing in itself.

Ways of knowing

Integrating modern science and Indigenous ways of knowing has again proved its worth, leading to a deeper understanding of trackmaker behaviour.

Soon a new team of Ju/’hoansi trackers will participate in another round of collaborative work on the Cape south coast. This time one focus will be on hominin tracks; another will be on searching for trackway evidence of the extinct bloubok antelope. We look forward to further discoveries of note.

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