There’s something intriguing, even frightening, about the image of an ancient horned serpent roaming across the land. Considering the abundance of dicynodont fossils found in the Karoo Basin in South Africa, some have pondered whether this long-thought mythical horned serpent is rooted in reality. If we’re lucky, it could provide further clues as to just how intertwined this horned serpent was with South Africa’s indigenous San culture. “The ethnographic, archaeological, and paleontological evidence are consistent with the hypothesis that the Horned Serpent panel could possibly depict a dicynodont,” Benoit wrote in the study. There’s plenty of leaps from legend to scientific grounding that may be too large for a fabled horned serpent to make.