Rock hyraxes, known in southern Africa more often as “dassies”, are furry, thickset creatures with short legs and no discernible tails. They spend much of their time sunning themselves on rocky outcrops.
Another thing they sometimes do is drag their butts along the ground. Dog owners know that this behaviour can be a sign of parasitic infections; in hyraxes the reason seems to be less clear, but this action leaves distinctive traces in sandy areas.
Traces and tracks – ancient, fossilised ones – are what we study at the African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience through the Cape south coast ichnology project. Over the past few decades, we have found almost 400 vertebrate tracksites on this coast, some as old as 400,000 years, in cemented dunes known as aeolianites from the Pleistocene epoch. This epoch lasted from about 2.58 million years ago to about 11,700 years ago.
