2,000-year-old cat drawing discovered in Peru's Nazca lines
The Nazca Lines have been a Unesco World Heritage site since 1994 and contains hundreds of geoglyphs
A giant 120 ft ancient cat drawing, more than 2000-year-old has been discovered in the Nazca Desert of Peru.
Scientists presumed that the cat figure was created through depression on the desert floor, leaving the coloured earth exposed, just like the other animal figures of Nazca, reports the BBC.
The figure of the cat went unnoticed until a new route to an observation platform was built recently as a vantage point for visitors to see many of the other geoglyphs.
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The Nazca Lines have been a Unesco World Heritage site since 1994 and contains hundreds of geoglyphs.
In a statement, Peru's culture ministry said: "The figure was scarcely visible and was about to disappear, because it's situated on quite a steep slope that's prone to the effects of natural erosion."
It added that the geoglyph, which is about 37m (120ft) long, has been cleaned and conserved over the past week.
Johny Isla, Peru's chief archaeologist for the Nazca lines, told Efe news agency that the cat pre-dates the Nazca culture - which created most of the figures from 200 to 700 AD.
The cat, he said, was actually from the late Paracas era, which was from 500 BC to 200 AD.
"We know that from comparing iconographies," he said. "Paracas textiles, for example, show birds, cats and people that are easily comparable to these geoglyphs."
