Stone Age Art Discovered in French Cave : Archeology: Culture minister likens paintings to those at Lascaux. Site is 260 miles south of Paris.

A cave covered in 300 Stone Age paintings of animals, apparently untouched for about 20,000 years, has been discovered in southern France in one of the archeological finds of the century, officials said Wednesday.

The perfectly preserved paintings of bison, reindeer, rhinoceros and other animals are comparable to those in the world-famous caves of Altamira in Spain and Lascaux in France, Culture Minister Jacques Toubon told a news conference.

Made up of several vast galleries, the cave includes both paintings and engravings. Experts said it boasts the first prehistoric portrayals known to man of a panther and an owl.

The cave is about 1,500 feet deep in the Ardeche, about 260 miles south of Paris, a region known for its grottoes and subterranean rivers. It was discovered in December by Jean-Marie Chauvet, a Culture Ministry official monitoring prehistoric remains in the area.

The discovery was not announced until Wednesday so the site could be protected. The cave was quickly secured by a heavy door and TV surveillance.

“This is an exceptional discovery, a treasure for humanity,” Toubon said, adding that the paintings most likely date from 20,000 BC to 17,000 BC.

A video revealed the rough outlines apparently unseen ever since the grotto was abandoned during the upper Paleolithic age--from 40,000 BC to 10,000 BC.

Two rhinoceroses, of a type long extinct, rub horns as they meet head-on in battle. A bump in the cave wall accents the huge bulk of a mammoth engraved into one panel, its charcoal outline shaded by hand.

Red imprints of hands line the vault above a portrayal, rare in the Stone Age, of a hyena. Bears, lions, horses and wild oxen also pepper the walls.

Unlike those in its cousin in Lascaux, paintings in the Ardeche cave are either in black or red and do not mix colors.

“We’d been authorized to search for caves, and we noticed one spot where there was a draft coming from underground. That was the first clue,” Chauvet said.

“We cleared some earth away and we made a way down a narrow hole, just big enough for us to slip through. We got in through the vault of a gallery. Only a week later did we realize how big a discovery this was,” he added.

Experts said the find raised a host of questions.

Set down on one large rock in the middle of one gallery is the skull of a bear. “Is this some kind of altar? Surely someone placed the skull for a reason,” French expert Jean Clottes said.

“Another question is why did men choose this place. There were bears here before and after the paintings were made. Some of the paintings have been scratched at by bears,” he added.

The cave also contained the bones of about 100 bears still in their hibernation nests, as well as hearths, flints and torches.

The paintings “will not be opened to the public so that the extremely fragile and precious relics can be studied,” Toubon said. “Preservation is our priority at the moment.”

The ministry said it plans to show the paintings to the public using video, CD-ROM or other multimedia techniques.