Recent discoveries are beginning to change that picture. They show that dinosaurs continued to live in southern Africa long after those dramatic lava flows.

New Dinosaur Tracks on South Africa’s Coast

In 2025, scientists reported dinosaur tracks about 140 million years old on a remote stretch of coastline in South Africa’s Western Cape. These were the first tracks from that time period in the region (the Cretaceous, 145 million to 66 million years ago).

Now, researchers have uncovered even more evidence.

As ichnologists (studying fossil tracks and traces), the team regularly works along the Western Cape coast near Knysna. Most of their research focuses on tracks preserved in coastal aeolianites (cemented sand dunes) that are between 50,000 and 400,000 years old.

During a visit in early 2025, they explored a small outcrop of rock formed in the early Cretaceous Period. It is the only nearby exposure of rock from that time, and much of it is submerged at high tide. The team hoped they might find a theropod (dinosaur) tooth like one discovered there by a 13-year-old boy in 2017.

Instead, they found something far more exciting. Linda Helm, a member of the group, spotted dinosaur tracks. A closer look revealed more than two dozen possible footprints.

A Tiny Site With Big Significance

The Brenton Formation exposure is very small, measuring no more than 40 meters long and five meters wide, with cliffs rising up to five meters above the shore. Finding dozens of tracks in such a limited area suggests that dinosaurs were fairly common in this region during the Cretaceous.

The researchers estimate the tracks are about 132 million years old. That makes them the youngest known dinosaur tracks in southern Africa (50 million years younger than the youngest tracks reported from the Karoo Basin). They also represent only the second known set of Cretaceous dinosaur tracks in South Africa, and the second from the Western Cape. Some tracks are preserved on flat rock surfaces, while others appear in cross section within the cliffs.

Southern Africa’s Dinosaur Fossil Record

Southern Africa holds an extensive record of vertebrate tracks and traces from the Mesozoic Era (the “Age of Dinosaurs,” from 252 million to 66 million years ago, a time span that includes the Jurassic), especially in the Karoo Basin, which is filled with thick layers of sedimentary rock.

Tracks from the Triassic and Jurassic periods are common in Lesotho and nearby regions of South Africa, including the Free State and Eastern Cape.

However, later volcanic activity created the Drakensberg Group, covering many of these fossil-bearing layers with lava. Some dinosaurs may have briefly survived the initial eruptions, but they were likely among the last animals to live in the Karoo Basin at that time.

As the supercontinent Gondwana began to break apart near the end of the Jurassic Period and into the early Cretaceous Period, smaller basins formed in what are now the Western Cape and Eastern Cape. These areas contain limited deposits from the Cretaceous.

Body fossils from these deposits, mainly in the Eastern Cape, include a range of dinosaurs. Among them are the first dinosaur identified in the southern hemisphere, now known to be a stegosaur, along with sauropods, a coelurosaurian, and young iguanodontids.

In contrast, fossil remains from the Western Cape are rare. They include a few isolated sauropod teeth, scattered bones likely from a sauropod, and two finds near Knysna: the theropod tooth discovered earlier and part of a tibia.

Now, attention is turning to footprints instead of bones.

Dinosaurs of Knysna

The newly discovered tracks lie in the modern intertidal zone, where they are covered by seawater at high tide twice a day.

The environment 132 million years ago would have looked very different from today’s coastline, estuary, and developed landscape. At that time, dinosaurs likely moved through tidal channels or along point bars (river beaches), surrounded by vegetation unlike anything in the area now.

The tracks appear to have been made by a mix of dinosaurs. These include theropods and possibly ornithopods (both these kinds of dinosaur were bipedal, walking on two legs), as well as possible sauropods (huge dinosaurs with very long necks and very long tails that were quadrupedal, walking on four legs). Theropods were meat eaters, while ornithopods and sauropods were plant eaters.

Identifying the exact type of dinosaur from footprints alone can be difficult. Theropod and ornithopod tracks can look similar, and sauropod tracks, although larger, do not always show clear toe impressions.

Because of these challenges, the researchers chose not to “over-interpret” the trackmakers. Their study focuses on documenting the presence and abundance of dinosaur tracks from this time period in the Brenton Formation.

More Discoveries May Be Ahead

The presence of early Cretaceous dinosaur tracks in both the Robberg Formation and the Brenton Formation suggests that more sites may still be waiting to be found. Other non-marine Cretaceous rock exposures exist in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape.

Future systematic searches of these areas could reveal additional dinosaur bones, more tracks, and possibly traces of other ancient animals.

Mark G. Dixon and Fred van Berkel of the African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience, Nelson Mandela University, contributed to this research.

The findings also challenged a popular older idea about snake origins. Instead of beginning as small burrowers, the evidence from Najash pointed to ancestors of modern snakes that were larger-bodied animals with wide mouths. The fossils also showed that early snakes held onto their hindlimbs for a long time before the rise of the mostly limbless snakes alive today.

“Our findings support the idea that the ancestors of modern snakes were big-bodied and big-mouthed — instead of small burrowing forms as previously thought,” explained Fernando Garberoglio, from the Fundación Azara at Universidad Maimónides, in Buenos Aires, Argentina and lead author on the study. “The study also reveals that early snakes retained their hindlimbs for an extended period of time before the origin of modern snakes which are for the most part, completely limbless.”

Hidden skull details inside a 100 million year old fossil

The fossil snakes described in the study came from Northern Patagonia and are closely tied to an ancient southern lineage that lived across the continents of Gondwana. Researchers say that group appears to be related to only a small number of unusual snakes still living today. To see inside the specimen without damaging it, the team used micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) scanning. That let them reconstruct the skull in exceptional detail, including the paths of nerves and blood vessels as well as bones buried inside the rock.

That level of detail helped resolve a long-running anatomical debate. Scientists had misunderstood the jugal bone in snakes and snake relatives for generations, and the Najash fossils gave them direct evidence to correct the record. The study’s authors argued that these new skulls and skeletons clarified the sequence of bone loss that eventually produced the highly specialized skulls of modern snakes.

“This research revolutionizes our understanding of the jugal bone in snake and non-snake lizards,” said Michael Caldwell, professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and a co-author on the study. “After 160 years of getting it wrong, this paper corrects this very important feature based not on guesswork, but on empirical evidence.”

“This research is critical to understanding the evolution of the skulls of modern and ancient snakes,” added Caldwell.

The paper, “New Skulls and Skeletons of the Cretaceous Legged Snake Najash, and the Evolution of the Modern Snake Body Plan,” was published in Science Advances in 2019.

Later studies added more twists to the snake origin story

Research published after the 2019 Najash paper has made the story even more interesting. In 2020, paleontologists described Boipeba tayasuensis, a Late Cretaceous blind snake from Brazil. That fossil pushed the record of blind snakes deeper into the age of dinosaurs and suggested that some early blind snakes were much larger than their living relatives, topping 1 meter in length. The finding supported the idea that parts of early snake evolution in Gondwana were more diverse, and often bigger-bodied, than once assumed.

Then, in 2023, another Science Advances study approached snake origins from an entirely different angle by reconstructing the brains of living squamates and fossil snakes. That work suggested the ancestor of crown snakes, meaning the group that gave rise to living snakes, may have been adapted for burrowing while also behaving opportunistically. Rather than neatly settling the debate, the result showed that snake origins were likely complex, with different branches of the snake family tree preserving different clues about how body shape, habitat, and feeding style evolved.

A 2025 Nature study added even more context by describing a Middle Jurassic squamate from Scotland with a striking mix of lizard-like and snake-like traits. The authors found that early squamate evolution involved a great deal of anatomical experimentation and convergent evolution, which helps explain why the earliest snake story has been so difficult to untangle from fossils alone.

Why Najash still matters

Even with those later discoveries, Najash remains one of the clearest windows into a crucial stage of snake evolution. It captures a moment when snakes still had hindlimbs, still retained a more lizard-like skull in some respects, and had not yet fully acquired the body plan seen in their modern descendants. That combination is exactly what makes the fossil so valuable. It does not just show an ancient snake. It shows an ancient snake in transition.

The University of Alberta described the work as part of the Faculty of Science’s broader mission as a major center for research and teaching, with a focus on advancing knowledge through classroom, laboratory, and field research.

The eastern face of the more than 60-meter-tall Menkaure pyramid has long puzzled researchers. A section of granite blocks, measuring roughly four meters high and six meters wide, appears unusually smooth and polished. Similar finishes are otherwise only seen at the pyramid’s known entrance on the north side. This unusual feature led researcher Stijn van den Hoven to propose in 2019 that a second entrance might exist at this location.

Advanced Scanning Reveals Hidden Cavities

As part of the ScanPyramids project, the research team closely examined the eastern facade and detected two anomalies behind the polished surface. By combining non-invasive techniques such as ground-penetrating radar, ultrasound, and electrical resistivity tomography, they were able to clearly identify two air-filled cavities. This marks the first time that structural irregularities have been confirmed behind this distinctive section of the pyramid.

The two voids were located at depths of 1.4 meters and 1.13 meters behind the outer wall. One measures approximately 1 meter high and 1.5 meters wide, while the other is about 0.9 meters by 0.7 meters. Achieving this level of accuracy required integrating data from multiple scanning methods. The use of Image Fusion, which combines all collected measurements, played a key role in confirming the existence and dimensions of these hidden spaces.

Findings Strengthen Entrance Hypothesis

“Following the significant validation of a hidden corridor in the Pyramid of Cheops in 2023, ScanPyramids has once again succeeded in making an important finding in Giza. The testing methodology we developed allows very precise conclusions to be drawn about the nature of the pyramid’s interior without damaging the valuable structure. The hypothesis of another entrance is very plausible, and our results take us a big step closer to confirming it,” says Christian Grosse, Professor of Non-destructive Testing at TUM.

Project Collaboration and Support

• Work at the pyramid was conducted in collaboration with and under the supervision of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities and the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.
• These ScanPyramids project results were achieved through the collaboration of mainly researchers from Cairo University, the Technical University of Munich (TUM), Portland State University, Dassault Systèmes, and the Heritage Innovation Preservation Institute.
• Additional partners and financial supporters were: the Science, Technology & Innovation Funding Authority (STDF), la Fondation Dassault Systèmes, NHK, TNG Technology Consulting, Mondaic AG. TUM was directly supported by TUM IGSSE and the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service).
• Christan Große is Professor of Non-desctructive testing at the TUM School of Engineering and Design.

Today, researchers are uncovering new details about that crisis. An interdisciplinary team from the University of South Florida is studying the Plague of Justinian and its far-reaching effects. The group, led by Rays H. Y. Jiang, an associate professor in the College of Public Health, has published a third paper in an ongoing series examining what is believed to be the first recorded outbreak of bubonic plague in the Mediterranean.

Their latest study, “Bioarchaeological signatures during the Plague of Justinian (541-750 CE) in Jerash, Jordan,” appears in the Journal of Archaeological Science. It expands scientific understanding of the outbreak that killed millions across the Byzantine Empire.

“We wanted to move beyond identifying the pathogen and focus on the people it affected, who they were, how they lived and what pandemic death looked like inside a real city,” Jiang said.

A Mass Grave Reveals the Scale of Death

At the height of the Plague of Justinian, affected individuals came from a wide range of communities that were often disconnected from one another. In death, however, they were brought together. Large numbers of bodies were placed quickly on top of pottery debris in an abandoned public area, which became the central focus of this study.

Jiang served as principal investigator, working with colleagues from USF’s Genomics, Global Health Infectious Disease Research Center and departments including anthropology, molecular medicine and history. Additional contributions came from archaeologist Karen Hendrix at Sydney University Australia and a DNA laboratory at Florida Atlantic University. Earlier research in the series focused mainly on Yersinia pestis, the bacterium responsible for plague. This new work explores how the disease affected society in both the short and long term, and what lessons it may hold today.

“The earlier stories identified the plague organism,” Jiang said. “The Jerash site turns that genetic signal into a human story about who died and how a city experienced crisis.”

First Confirmed Plague Mass Grave

Historical accounts describe widespread disease during the Byzantine era, but many suspected plague burial sites have lacked firm proof. Jerash now stands as the first location where a plague-related mass grave has been confirmed through both archaeological evidence and genetic testing.

Researchers determined that the burial represents a single event, unlike traditional cemeteries that develop gradually. In Jerash, hundreds of individuals were buried within a matter of days. This discovery reshapes understanding of the First Pandemic by providing clear evidence of large-scale mortality and offering insight into how people lived, moved and became vulnerable within ancient urban environments.

Mobility and Hidden Connections

The findings also help resolve a long-standing question. Historical and genetic data indicate that people traveled and mixed across regions, yet burial evidence often suggests communities remained local.

The Jerash site shows that both patterns can coexist. Migration typically unfolded slowly over generations and blended into everyday life, making it difficult to detect in standard burial grounds. During a crisis, however, individuals from more mobile backgrounds were brought together in one place, making those hidden connections visible.

Evidence suggests the individuals buried in Jerash belonged to a mobile population that was part of the wider urban community. Normally spread across the region, they were united in a single burial during a moment of crisis.

Understanding the Human Impact of Pandemics

“By linking biological evidence from the bodies to the archaeological setting, we can see how disease affected real people within their social and environmental context,” Jiang said. “This helps us understand pandemics in history as lived human health events, not just outbreaks recorded in text.”

The research is helping shift how scientists view pandemics, emphasizing not only how they begin and spread but also how they affect daily life and social structures. Dense cities, travel and environmental changes played a role then, much as they do today.

“Pandemics aren’t just biological events, they’re social events, and this study shows how disease intersects with daily life, movement and vulnerability,” Jiang said. “Because pandemics reveal who is vulnerable and why, those patterns still shape how disease affects societies today.”

Research Team

In addition to Jiang, the USF team on the three papers included:

• Swamy R. Adapa, research and development scientist, Department of Global Environmental and Genomic Health Sciences, COPH
• Andrea Vianello, PhD, visiting research fellow, Department of Anthropology, College of Arts and Sciences
• Elizabeth Remily-Wood, proteomics core director, Department of Molecular Medicine, Morsani College of Medicine
• Gloria C. Ferreira, PhD, professor, Department of Molecular Medicine, Morsani College of Medicine and College of Arts and Sciences
• Michael Decker, PhD, Maroulis Professor of Byzantine History and Orthodox Religion, Department of History, College of Arts and Sciences
• Robert H. Tykot, PhD, professor, Department of Anthropology, College of Arts and Sciences