Fossil snake traces: another world-first find on South Africa's Cape south coast

By Charles Helm, Research Associate, African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience, Nelson Mandela University
Hayley Cawthra, Specialist Scientist, Council for Geoscience

Snakes are familiar, distinctive – and often feared – reptiles. And they’ve been around for a long time: body fossils found in the UK, Portugal and the US stretch all the way back to the late Jurassic period, about 150 million years ago.

Until now, though, there hasn’t been a single description of a surface fossilised snake trace – a mark on a surface that’s become cemented and re-exposed over time – anywhere in the world.

There are probably several reasons for this. One is that the tracks of large quadrupeds…

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