In an exciting re-evaluation of South African cave art drawings, the superb renderings have been found to be far older than originally thought -- 3,000 years rather than 1,000 as previously believed, said archeologist Aron Mazel.  The images were analyzed using Accelerator Mass Spectrometry at Britain's Newcastle University and Canberra's Australian National University -- and one of them clearly shows a well-drawn image of an alien being.

"This is an important step forward in the interpretation of some of the world's finest rock art,"  archeologist Mazel told a Reuters News Service interviewer.

In the inset at right, the image of the alien being plainly shows a pair of antennae, a large proboscis (nose), one eye, its mouth, and two somewhat hoof-like feet -- all part of a single, large, "unibody" body mass.

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"Not only does this make them far older than had been thought, but it also means that we can now begin to match up the paintings with excavations in the rock shelters," said archaeologist Mazel in the same Reuters interview, raising the possibility of still more extraterrestrial images to be found in the South African cave paintings.

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