Posted on 11/23/2013 12:58:13 PM PST by Dysart
LOL
He'll give you the answer that you endorse.
Uh, no fair piggy backing on my earlier comment. I brought up ice ages first. I’m telling the teacher....
Horses actually evolved in the Western Hemisphere but became extinct here about 12,000 years ago - probably the result of that big "climate change" called the Ice Age. But they survived in Asia and elsewhere in the East. They were re-introduced to the Americas by your "invading European hordes."
This article confuses me though. I did some research on the fossil horse Eohippus shoshonensis gidley, sometimes called the American zebra. It was about the same size as a modern Arabian horse. In fact I knew the man who discovered it in the Hagerman (Idaho) fossil beds. Most sources say those fossils date back 3 1/2 million years. This article says the new discovery dates Equus back as much as 4 million years, "twice as long as they previously believed." Huh? It doesn't compute.
They must be talking about equus, the modern horse. Ancestors go back some 50 million years as you note. The modern horse isn’t found in rock older than the Pleistocene. At least it hasn’t been found in older rock, yet.
Hello, wilbur
Yes, I checked the article and they specifically reference Equus. Still, 500,000 years isn’t 2 million.
You can on Japanese TV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmxQSwwTRqU
Of course, of course.
But Who ever heard of a morsing horse?
Among the team’s findings is that the genus Equus -- which includes all horses, donkeys, and zebras -- dates back more than 4 million years, twice as long ago as scientists had previously believed.I think there was a topic about this sometime in the past year, but let's regard this as an update if that's the case.
A mine I worked at in NV had a lot of horse and camel fossils found during a permitting survey. It was fascinating.
Wilburrrrrr!
Really funny. Thanks!
Actually horses were common in North America at one time but they became extinct, possibly killed off for food or maybe the ice ages took care of them. Later, of course, horses were re-introduced to America by the Europeans.
Modern horses, zebras, and asses belong to the genus Equus, the only surviving genus in a once diverse family, the Equidae. Based on fossil records, the genus appears to have originated in North America about 4 million years ago and spread to Eurasia (presumably by crossing the Bering land bridge) 2 to 3 million years ago. Following that original emigration, there were additional westward migrations to Asia and return migrations back to North America, as well as several extinctions of Equus species in North America.
The last prehistoric North American horses died out between 13,000 and 11,000 years ago, at the end of the Pleistocene, but by then Equus had spread to Asia, Europe, and Africa.
(snip)
Thanks. The article goes on to make a solid case that our Western wild horses should be considered native, not feral. Of course that has broad wildlife management policy implications.
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