Poster Boy: Again, thanks for such a thoughtful reply. Naturally, I have a few comments! :)

It seems we can agree that the "charging ibex" is an impossible interpretation. And yet, that is Martin's standard identification of the little beastie. The quote I gave you was from the beginning of his first paper, when he was describing the layout of the pillar; but by the end of that same paper, he had identified the beast as a "charging ibex/crouching rat." In the second paper, it is "ibex/gazelle" - in most subsequent work of his that I've looked at, it's a "charging ibex ,"including an earlier post in this thread, where he informs me that "[he has] had other people tell [him] it's obviously a charging ibex."

As for the "standing ibex," I am a little surprised that you can still see hind legs at point D. Look at the width of that element! The snarl lines and the square depression of the teeth are perfectly clear. With the feline, there are no anatomical anomalies. With the ibex, the horn emerges from the back of the neck and the hind legs make no sense at all. You are worried that the tail is closer to the body than in the other feline exx, but note that the space is limited by other images above. And yes, all the comparative images I gave you are from Gobekli Tepe.

You asked about other stylistic conventions at GT. Well, a very marked one is that mammals and birds are shown side-view, whereas reptiles (eg, snakes, lizards) and arthropods (eg, scorpions and spiders) are shown in top view. This makes nonsense of Martin's identification of the little beast beside the rightmost "handbag" as a bear. He was probably closer to being right in his first paper, where he calls it a downward-crawling frog, than in subsequent work, where he turns into a bear. Why he changed the ID is very interesting, and a further example of his naivete in image interpretation. But it's midnight, I've been ripping up old linoleum all day (deep in home-reno hell), and I'm too tired to get the images together right now. I'll do my best to get the story up tomorrow. Cheers!