Through the Cape south coast ichnology project, based out of the African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience at Nelson Mandela University, Gqeberha, more than 350 Pleistocene vertebrate tracksites have been identified along a 350-km stretch of coastline (Helm 2023), and 45 peer-reviewed scientific articles have been published, are under review or are in press. One of these was of relevance to a Namibian species, as an extended Pleistocene range was inferred for sand-swimming golden moles like Eremitalpa granti, the Namib mole (Lockley et al. 2021a, 2021b). The resulting corpus of knowledge has contributed substantially to the global understanding of Quaternary ichnology (Neto de Carvalho et al., in press a, in press b). As an ichnological team, we have done our best to do justice to these discoveries, while remaining mindful of the gaps in our communal knowledge base, and consequently of our limitations. In contrast, we recognize that we are at a disadvantage compared with trackers who learned their ichnological skills as part of their earliest life experiences and then never stopped learning, i.e., in whom such an approach was inculcated at a time of brain plasticity. This would seemingly provide a lifelong advantage over relative latecomers such as us. We noted a provocative book title proclaiming that the art of tracking was "the origin of science" (Liebenberg 1990). We concurred with this claim.