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Art carved into rock by prehistoric people can tell us a lot聽about the places they lived. Now rock engravings in north-west Saudi Arabia suggest that the region was once home to a host of聽unexpected animals.

Skeletal remains are the best record of wildlife in prehistoric ecosystems. However, very few of these from the past 11,000 years have been found on the Arabian peninsula, so we don鈥檛 know which animals once lived there.

To find out, at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, and her colleagues studied rock art at Jubbah and Shuwaymis, .

The team examined more than聽1400 rock engraving panels, some聽dating back to 8000 BC. The聽pictures contain around 6600 depictions of wildlife. The team could identify the exact species shown.

Kudu and aurochs, oh my

Some of the art showed animals聽that have never been seen in the local archaeological record. For example, antelope called appeared in the engravings, given away by their distinctive spiral horns. Before now, there was little evidence that they ever left Africa.

Another depiction resembles an aurochs, the wild progenitors of modern domestic cattle, which are mostly known from Europe and Central Asia. There were also representations of wild and , neither of which is known from this part of Arabia.

The results suggest that these species roamed more widely than thought. They also indicate that, at the time the art was made, north-west Arabia was moist enough to support vegetation for browsing mammals such as kudu.

It was already known that Arabia experienced a humid period that ended 6000 years ago, and clearly the area was lush with plant life.

A changed land

Nowadays, most of Arabia is sandy and rocky desert, but the region has experienced many wetter periods in the past, when the monsoon rains extended further inland. Our distant ancestors may have entered Arabia from Africa during an earlier wet period.

鈥淭he prehistoric environment of north-western Saudi Arabia supported a much wider range of animal species than previously thought,鈥� says Guagnin.

However, we don鈥檛 know how common the animals once were. The fact that certain animals are shown in the art doesn鈥檛 necessarily imply they were widespread. 鈥淥nly assemblages of bones can tell us how frequent particular animals were in the landscape,鈥� says Guagnin.

Some may have had symbolic or religious value, in which case people may have chosen to depict them even though they were rarely seen.

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淩ock art reveals lost wildlife鈥�