The Prehistoric Horse Thread

Adam Khor

Spotted zebras? The simplest explanation is often the truth, so it seems that these horses were portrayed by cave artists as being spotted because they WERE so in real life.

http://www.livescience.com/16913-spotted-horses-cave-paintings.html

Adam Khor

It's called a "Probodiscipparion", and its described as being "large to giant sized" and having a similar nose structure to a tapir. A trunked horse? :eek:
It is also said to have lived besides water, like a tapir. A water horse?? :eek::eek:

http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-skull-hipparion-early-pleistocene-longdan.html

Galvasean

What an amazing creature! Any idea what they mean by 'large to giant' in terms of size?
Also, I'm surprised that it's in the Hipparion genus. I would have imagined it would have been an entirely new genus.

Adam Khor

Galvasean wrote: »

What an amazing creature! Any idea what they mean by 'large to giant' in terms of size?
Also, I'm surprised that it's in the Hipparion genus. I would have imagined it would have been an entirely new genus.

Me too...

I don´t know what large to giant means in this case... I believe the largest prehistoric horses known are on the higher end of modern day horse size range.

Galvasean

Horses are a strange one. They've (as far as we know) never had a branch that evolved toward 'gigantism'. Practically every animal family does at some point.

Adam Khor

Galvasean wrote: »

Horses are a strange one. They've (as far as we know) never had a branch that evolved toward 'gigantism'. Practically every animal family does at some point.

Eqqus giganteus and Eqqus capensis were quite big, actually... up to 2 m tall and about as heavy as some of the largest modern day horse breeds. Plus there's tons of equine fossils that haven´t been properly described/announced and may be as large or larger than these two.

Adam Khor

These ancient horses apparently had trunks.

The study separates three distinct genera of prehistoric, browsing horses that apparently developed tapir-like trunks independently from each other.

https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/RIPS/article/view/10202

Adam Khor

https://siberiantimes.com/science/casestudy/news/n0877-remains-of-extinct-zebra-like-horse-found-at-denisova-cave-home-of-ancient-man/

Kamili

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/03/science/horse-skeleton-utah.html?fbclid=IwAR2etS5s8NRTIZ0giraWoRkGOyL8q8w-_ztyIsv8-7VSzCv9lWV2kmlSmLU&mc_cid=78d9051a3a&mc_eid=09334ab492

Adam Khor

Incredible!

Heraldoffreeent

He's a bit thin..........

Victor

Have there been (m)any pre-1492 finds of horses in the Americas?

Adam Khor

Yes of course. Horses were abundant and diverse in the Americas until about 12.000-10.000 years ago, when they went extinct along with other megaherbivores (mammoths, camels, giant bison etc).

Kamili

I wonder if they will find the head.

Wibbs

From what I read of the find it was uncovered during some garden landscaping of some nature and sadly apparently earlier work had taken the head and they found bits of skull and a few teeth in disturbed soil nearby.

Adam Khor

That is sad. Countless fossils must have been lost that way without anyone even noticing.

Adam Khor

Horse family tree simpler than previously believed, suggests DNA study.

https://www.horsetalk.co.nz/2019/09/20/ancient-dna-simpler-family-tree-horses/