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Charles Helm, Research Associate, African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience, Nelson Mandela University

New discovery: fossilised giant zebra tracks found in South Africa

An illustration of two giant Cape zebras alongside a much smaller plains zebra. Maggie Newman

Tens of thousands of years ago, a huge horse species walked, trotted and galloped across the shifting sands of what is today South Africa’s Cape south coast.

The Giant Cape Zebra (Equus capensis) weighed an estimated 450 kg. Its extant relatives in southern Africa are far smaller: the plains zebra weighs between 250 and 300 kg and the Cape mountain zebra is the smallest of all zebra species, with a mass of between 230 and 260 kg.

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