PARIS -- A cave covered in 300 Stone Age paintings of animals, apparently untouched for some 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. The cave, in gorges near the town of Vallon-Pont-d'Arc in Ardeche northwest of Avignon, was found Dec. 18 by Jean-Marie Chauvet, a ministry official monitoring prehistoric remains in the region.


"This is an exceptional discovery," Toubon said, adding that the paintings probably dated from 20,000 B.C. to 17,000 B.C. A video revealed the rough outlines apparently unseen since the grotto, prickly with stalactites, was abandoned during the upper Paleolithic age -- from 40,000 B.C. to 10,000 B.C.


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 aurochs -- an extinct wild ox -- also pepper the grotto.


Set down on a 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," said expert Jean Clottes.


Such sites are believed to be a type of religious sanctuary, dedicated to cults about which modern man knows little, because humans of the Stone Age did not live in the caves they decorated and did not decorate their homes.