Las Dantas panel at Cerro Azul, La Lindosa (arrow points to proposed giant sloth painting).
Credit: José Iriarte, et al/Royal Society B 2022

Did ancient Americans in the forests of South America see strange prehistoric mammals before they disappeared forever at the end of the Ice Age? Cave paintings discovered in a remote region of Colombia appear to depict giant ground sloths, elephant-like gomphotheres, ancient horses, and a car-sized armadillo relative called a glyptodont. The paintings provide a rare glimpse of a long-lost ecosystem, populated by giant animals known as megafauna, that few people had ever set eyes upon.

The paintings were discovered at Serranía de la Lindosa, a natural rock shelter on the banks of the Guayabero River in central Colombia. Although the cave paintings were known to the Indigenous people of the region, they were inaccessible to scientists due to the remote location and ongoing civil conflict in the area. However, scientists have been able to study the paintings in detail in recent expeditions. The images were created using red ochre, a natural mineral pigment commonly used in cave paintings throughout the world.

The cave paintings show several familiar South American animals, including capybaras and horses. The researchers believe the paintings depict native horses from the region before they became extinct about 10,000 years ago rather than modern horses that were introduced to South America by the Spanish in the 1500’s.

Other figures seem to show strange Ice Age megafauna that became extinct thousands of years ago. One intriguing image depicts a large, stocky animal with elongated forearms next to what appears to be its cub. Researchers believe this image depicts a giant ground sloth, an extinct relative of the modern sloth that was as large as an elephant. The researchers identified other possible Ice Age species in the paintings, including a gomphothere (a relative of modern elephants), a glyptodont, and a bizarre hoofed mammal called Litopterna, which resembled an antelope with a short trunk-like snout.

There is abundant evidence from cave paintings in Europe and Asia that humans coexisted with Ice Age megafauna before they went extinct. However, similar cave paintings are rare in the Americas. No people lived in the Americas before Indigenous people arrived. Most scientists think the first people came to the Americas from Asia at least 15,000 years ago. Many of the animals depicted went extinct soon after the arrival of humans in the region. By about 10,000 years ago, horses, mammoths, gomphotheres, ground sloths, and glyptodonts had disappeared. Scientists continue to debate the role of human hunters in the extinction of Ice Age megafauna in the Americas. Many scientists believe that other factors, such as climate change at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch may have had a larger role in the extinction of these great beasts.

June 26, 2014

An ancient Inca road in South America, a French cave with prehistoric art, and mysterious stone spheres in Costa Rica are among the 30 new important sites just added to the World Heritage List. The list is an international registry of sites with cultural and natural significance. Some sites are listed because of their unusual scenery and wildlife. Others are included because of their importance as part of our cultural heritage. Some areas possess both natural and cultural importance. The list, established in 1972, is maintained by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) World Heritage Committee. The committee also works to preserve the sites. With the new additions, the list now includes 1,007 sites around the world.

The United States gained its 22nd site, the monumental earthenworks of Poverty Point, Louisiana. The complex comprises five mounds, six concentric semi-elliptical ridges separated by shallow depressions, and a central plaza. The complex was created and used for residential and ceremonial purposes by a society of hunter-gatherers from 3,700 to 3,100 B.C. Other Heritage List sites in the United States include Independence Hall in Philadephia; Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona; Cahokia Mounds State Historical Site in Illinois; and the Statue of Liberty in New York City.

In addition to having “outstanding universal value,” sites must meet at least 1 of 10 criteria. These include representing “a masterpiece of human creative genius”; containing “superlative natural phenomena or areas of exceptional natural beauty and aesthetic importance”; and containing “the most important and significant natural habitats for in-situ conservation of biological diversity.”

Chauvet Cave in southern France was added to the World Heritage List because of its spectacular examples of art by prehistoric people. (Center for Information & Documentation (DRAC Rhone-Alpes))

The latest additions to the World Heritage List include:

• Qhapac Nan, a 1,865-mile (3,000-kilometer) network of roads that connected all parts of the Incas‘ Andes Mountain empire;
• Grotte Chauvet in France, which holds the earliest known and best preserved figurative drawings in the world, dating back as early as  32,000 B.C.;
• The Stone Spheres of the Diquis Delta in Costa Rica, known for their perfection, size, and density, “whose meaning, use and production remain largely a mystery.” The spheres are located on four archaeological sites dating from A.D. 500 to 1500 that also contain artificial mounds, paved areas, and burial sites.
• The Okavango Delta, a vast wetland in Botswana, that is home to some of the world’s most endangered species of large mammals, including cheetahs, white rhinoceroses, black rhinoceroses, African wild dogs, and lions.
• Stevns Klint, a site in Denmark that contains geologic and fossil evidence of the impact of the Chicxulub meteorite that crashed into the ocean off the coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula about 65 million years ago. The catastrophic impact is believed to have caused the extinction of some 50 percent of all species on Earth, including the last of the dinosaurs;
• The Mount Hamiguitan Range Wildlife Sanctuary in the Philippines, a mountain ridge that provides habitat for a range of plant and animal species, some of which are critically endangered.

To see all sites chosen for the World Heritage List in 2014, go to

http://whc.unesco.org/en/newproperties/date=2014&mode=list