An update on Pleistocene tortoise tracks on South Africa’s Cape south coast

Abstract Four new Pleistocene track-bearing aeolianite surfaces have been identified on South Africa’s Cape south coast, each portraying evidence of tortoise tracks. Together, they add to and buttress previous reports of tortoise tracks and trackways from the region. Globally, this remains the only area from which fossilized tortoise tracks have been recorded, and for the first time we illustrate the preservation of typical tortoise trackway morphology (involving a ‘tramline’ pattern with a wide straddle and closely spaced tracks), as observed in the trackways of extant tortoises. One site provides further evidence for the inferred presence of a very large tortoise trackmaker from the region during the Pleistocene. This tortoise was substantially larger than the largest extant tortoises in southern Africa, which bolsters the inference of either an extinct very large tortoise or a large chrono-subspecies of the extant leopard tortoise ( Stigmochelys pardalis ). The mismatch between the body fossil record and trace fossil record with respect to the presence of large tortoises in the southern Cape persists. One trackway was probably registered by a smaller leopard tortoise, and the other trackways may have been registered by an angulate tortoise ( Chersina angulata ).