Does This Amazon Rock Art Depict Extinct Ice Age Mammals?

The animals painted in ocher in Colombia may include giant ground sloths and other creatures that vanished from the Americas. But some researchers say the art has a more recent origin.

At the end of the last ice age, South America was home to strange animals that have since vanished into extinction: giant ground sloths, elephant-like herbivores and an ancient lineage of horses. A new study suggests that we can see these lost creatures in enchanting ocher paintings made by ice age humans on a rocky outcrop in the Colombian Amazon.

These dazzling rock art displays at Serranía de la Lindosa, a site on the remote banks of the Guayabero River, were long known to the area’s Indigenous people but were virtually off limits to researchers because of the Colombian Civil War. Recent expeditions led by José Iriarte, an archaeologist at the University of Exeter in England, have sparked renewed interest and heated debate over the interpretation of the animals in the paintings.

“The whole biodiversity of the Amazon is painted there,” Dr. Iriarte said, both aquatic and land creatures and plants, as well as “animals that are very intriguing and appear to be ice age large mammals.”