Four new Pleistocene track-bearing aeolianite surfaces have been identified on South Africa’s Cape south coast, each portraying evidence of tortoise tracks. Together, they add to and buttress previous reports of tortoise tracks and trackways from the region. Globally, this remains the only area from which fossilized tortoise tracks have been recorded, and for the first time we illustrate the preservation of typical tortoise trackway morphology (involving a ‘tramline’ pattern with a wide straddle and closely spaced tracks), as observed in the trackways of extant tortoises. One site provides further evidence for the inferred presence of a very large tortoise trackmaker from the region during the Pleistocene. This tortoise was substantially larger than the largest extant tortoises in southern Africa, which bolsters the inference of either an extinct very large tortoise or a large chrono-subspecies of the extant leopard tortoise (Stigmochelys pardalis). The mismatch between the body fossil record and trace fossil record with respect to the presence of large tortoises in the southern Cape persists. One trackway was probably registered by a smaller leopard tortoise, and the other trackways may have been registered by an angulate tortoise (Chersina angulata).

Although tortoises (Testudinidae) are a familiar clade of reptiles, with a body fossil record extending to at least the Eocene, hitherto no tortoise ichnosites have been described. Here, a number of sites attributed to tortoise trackmakers are identified within Pleistocene aeolianites on South Africa's Cape south coast. These date from late Marine Isotope Stage 6 to Marine Isotope Stage 4. The findings indicate large trackmakers, with evidence of a trackmaker length of more than a meter—substantially longer than the largest extant tortoises in southern Africa. This suggests either the presence of an extinct very large tortoise species, or that Pleistocene leopard tortoises in the region were larger than their descendants. Variations in substrate properties are responsible for a variety of track and trace forms. A mismatch exists between the reported ichnological evidence for large tortoises, and the regional archaeological and body fossil records, which almost exclusively comprise smaller tortoises. The findings illustrate the potential of ichnology to complement and augment the paleontological and archaeological records.