By 55 million years ago, the first members of the
The evolutionary lineage of the horse is among the best-documented in all paleontology. The history of the horse family, Equidae, began during the Eocene Epoch, which lasted from about 56 million to 33.9 million years ago.
However, about 10,000 years ago at the end of the Pleistocene, most of North America's large mammals, including Equus species, went extinct. The cause of their extinction is widely debated among the scientific community with a definitive conclusion not yet determined, but several theories exist.
Eohippus was very different to our modern horse – so much so that at first it wasn't believed to be related at all. Between 4.2hh and 5hh, it was the size of a fox, and had an arched back and raised hindquarters. Its teeth were adapted for a browsing diet- eating leaves, fruit, and shoots of shrubby plants.
Archaeologists say horse domestication may have begun in Kazakhstan about 5,500 years ago, about 1,000 years earlier than originally thought. Their findings also put horse domestication in Kazakhstan about 2,000 years earlier than that known to have existed in Europe.
Horses (Equus caballus) were introduced with European settlement both in Australia and New Zealand. Over time, animals escaped and were released and were first recognised as pests in Australia in the 1860's. In contrast to Australia, the New Zealand population is protected.
Horses first arrived in Australia in 1788 with the First Fleet. They were imported for farm and utility work; recreational riding and racing were not major activities. By 1800, only about 200 horses are thought to have reached Australia.
Their work revealed that the majority of medieval horses, including those used in war, were less than 14.2 hands (4 feet 10 inches) tall from the ground to their shoulder blades—the maximum height of a pony today, according to Matthew Hart for Nerdist.
Wild horses roamed the Ice Age landscape of Europe tens of thousands of years ago. By around 40,000 years ago, our own species began to settle in the region as well. In Ice Age Europe, people were predators and horses were prey.
Dinohippus. The Dinohippus shown grazing on the left is a close relative of horses today. Like modern-day Equus, Dinohippus had single-toed hooves and ate mostly grass. The other extinct species shown in the diorama had three toes and never developed single hooves.
As horses' legs grew longer, the extra toes at the end of the limb would have been “like wearing weights around your ankles,” McHorse says. Shedding those toes could have helped early horses save energy, allowing them to travel farther and faster, she says.
Had it not been for previous westward migration, over the 2 Bering Land Bridge, into northwestern Russia (Siberia) and Asia, the horse would have faced complete extinction. However, Equus survived and spread to all continents of the globe, except Australia and Antarctica.
Today, only two subspecies of horses are alive, but over millions of years, there have been many different types of horses that have since become extinct. This article will introduce four species of extinct horses and close relatives that used to gallop around the wild.
The greatest age reliably recorded for a horse is 62 years for Old Billy (foaled 1760), bred by Edward Robinson of Woolston, Lancashire, UK.
Przewalski's horses, critically endangered horses found in Mongolia, are the last truly wild horse. Once thought to be the ancestor to the domestic horse, they are actually distant cousins. Mitochondrial DNA suggests that they diverged from a common ancestor 500,000 years ago.
Thus the classic story of horse evolution was formed: as grasslands took over from forests, the horse gradually evolved larger body size (perhaps to better defend against predators), taller-crowned teeth to handle abrasive grasses, and long, monodactyl limbs to race away from predators in their newly open habitat (Fig.
According to these results, it appears the genus Equus evolved from a Dinohippus-like ancestor ~4–7 mya. It rapidly spread into the Old World and there diversified into the various species of asses and zebras. A North American lineage of the subgenus E. (Equus) evolved into the New World stilt-legged horse (NWSLH).
Although horses appeared in Paleolithic cave art as early as 30,000 BCE, these were wild horses and were probably hunted for meat. The clearest evidence of early use of the horse as a means of transport is from chariot burials dated c. 2000 BCE.
The takhi is the only true wild horse left in the world. The so-called “wild” horses that abound in Australia and North America are actually feral. A domestic animal becomes "feral" simply by fending for itself when left in the wild, without being helped or managed by humans in any way.
EOHIPPUS. The first equid was Hyracotherium, a small forest animal of the early Eocene. It looked nothing at all like a horse (10 – 20” hight). It resembled a dog with an arched back, short neck, short snout, short legs, and long tail.
For 5,000 years the horse has been an ever-present ally in war and peace. Civilisations have risen and fallen on their backs and evidence of the horse's use is everywhere to be seen.
Horseback riding was likely common 5,000 years ago, scientists find Researchers have found evidence of horseback riding in skeletal remains of people who lived about 5,000 years ago, adding to a body of research on when people first started using horses to get around.
Unlike Plains Indians in North America, Aboriginal people in Arnhem Land did not adopt horses to aid in the hunting of animals, as part of exchange networks, to increase status, or as a form of commodity, even though there were horses roaming freely on their country.
AUSTRALIAN STOCK HORSE OR WALER.
Horses arrived with the First Fleet in 1788. Shipments of working farm horses followed, and the first record of horses either escaping into the bush or being abandoned was in 1804. Much of the country was initially grazed without fences, so escape was common.