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Horses have been intrinsically entwined with human history for the past five millennia, acting as an early means of rapid transport and playing a key part in agriculture, warfare and sport.Despite this, major decades-long mysteries have surrounded where and how modern horses were first domesticated. Yet a large international team of zooarchaeologists, historians and geneticists, all experts in horse evolutionary history, has recently started coming up with some answers. The results are showing just how much this can reveal about both the horse itself and about human history and culture—and how much we still have to find out."Horses are perhaps...

The skeletal remains of a man buried 1,400 years ago near a headless horse have been discovered at an ancient cemetery in the town of Knittlingen in southern Germany. He likely was the horse's owner/rider when he was alive. The man was buried at a time when the Merovingian dynasty (A.D. 476–750) flourished in the area, ruling a giant swath of territory in what is now France and Central Europe. During his lifetime, the man likely served the dynasty's kings. "He stood in a 'chain of command' with the Merovingian kings on its top, which meant he was obliged to...

In Yorkshire, a Chariot from the Iron Age was found, making it the second such find in two years. In a small town in Yorkshire named Pocklington, on a construction site, houses were built. The discovery was made. There has now been a delay in construction on the homes as a new dig begins in October. Interesting is that not only the chariot is discovered but the horse’s skeletons are also found that pulled up the wagon and the driver’s human remains.

In the increasingly urbanized world, few people still ride horses for reasons beyond sport or leisure. However, on horseback, people, goods and ideas moved across vast distances, shaping the power structures and social systems of the premechanized era. From the trade routes of the Silk Road or the great Mongol Empire to the equestrian nations of the American Great Plains, horses were the engines of the ancient world. Where, when and how did humans first domesticate horses? Tracing the origins of horse domestication in the prehistoric era has proven to be an exceedingly difficult task. Horses -- and the people...

IQALUIT, Nunavut (CP) - A mysterious skull discovered on the edge of the Arctic Circle has sparked interest in what creatures roamed Baffin Island in the distant past, and what life a warming climate may support in the future. Andrew Dialla, a resident of Pangnirtung, Nunavut, says he found the skull protruding from the frozen tundra during a walk near the shore with his daughter about a month ago. The horned skull is about the size of a man's fist. It resembles a baby caribou skull, except at that age, a caribou wouldn't have antlers, researchers and elders have pointed...

Researchers in Germany have unearthed 400,000 year old wooden spears from what appears to be an ancient lake shore hunting ground stunning evidence that human ancestors systematically hunted big game much earlier than believed. The three spears, each carved from the trunk of a spruce tree, are 6 feet to more than 7 feet long. They were found with more than 10,000 animal bones, mostly from horses, including many obviously butchered. That indicates the ancient hunters were organized enough to trap horses and strong enough to kill them by throwing spears, perhaps ambushing herds that showed up for water. “There’s...

Full title: JURASSIC LARK Woolly Mammoths will roam new Jurassic Park-style theme park with cave lions and extinct horses in TEN YEARS, Russian scientists sayThe beasts are set to make a comeback to the plains of Siberia some 14,000 years after going extinct. LONG extinct cave lions may be about to rise from their icy graves and prowl once more alongside woolly mammoths and ancient horses in a real life Jurassic Park. In less than 10 years it is hoped the fearsome big cats will be released from an underground lab as part of a remarkable plan to populate a...

ETERNAL LOVE Skeletons of 5,000-year-old Romeo and Juliet ‘lovers’ found buried alongside remains of two sacrificed horses ‘pulling a chariot into the afterlife’The couple were found buried with lavish jewellery, spearheads and ceramic pottery in the Karaganda regionTHE 5,000-year-old remains of a "Romeo and Juliet" couple have been unearthed next to the skeletons of two sacrificed horses in Kazakhstan. Their bones were found lying side by side in an ancient grave alongside metal spearheads, precious stones and ceramic pottery in the Karaganda region. Their bones look worn but it's clear both lovers are lying on their sides and almost locked...

The last 'wild' horses is the world are not truly wild, according to a shock DNA study. Przewalski's horses, a breed thought to be the last 'wild' species, are the descendants of escaped once-domesticated animals. The research turns the mysterious origin of domesticated horses 'upside down', experts claim.

'Truly amazing' scientific discovery on adaptation of Yakutian horses to cold By The Siberian Times reporter 28 November 2015 Fast track evolution as great Siberian symbol is surprisingly unmasked as an immigrant breed. Researchers say these horses, which seem so well attuned to the harsh cold with thick, dense winter coats, their armour against temperatures of minus 70C (minus 94F), are incomers that only arrived in these parts within the last 800 years. Picture: Maria Vasilyeva The resilient Yakutian horses are one of the great native sights of the Sakha Republic - or Yakutia. In their way as much a part of...

For the first time in three decades, paleontologists are about to revisit one of North America's most remarkable troves of ancient fossils: The bones of tens of thousands of animals piled at the bottom of a sinkhole-type cave. Natural Trap Cave in Wyoming is 85 feet (25 meters) deep and almost impossible to see until you're standing right next to it. Over tens of thousands of years, many, many animals—including now-extinct mammoths, short-faced bears, American lions and American cheetahs—shared the misfortune of not noticing the 15-foot-wide (4 meters) opening until they were plunging to their deaths. Now, the U.S. Bureau...

The cave is cool and damp -- prefect for preserving prehistoric remains, Meachen says. "It's like a refrigerator in there, and probably has been for 20,000 years," she said. "Some of the bones we're finding there have collagen in them. That is where you could get the ancient DNA." The scientists saw bones falling out of a part of the cave, and decided to start digging there. "That was the fossil layer," she said. "There is so much to dig. We have two more years for funding that we can be out there, so we are going to try to...

(Reuters) - Scientists excavating an ancient Wyoming sinkhole containing a rare trove of fossils of Ice Age mammals have unearthed hundreds of bones of such prehistoric animals as American cheetahs, a paleontologist said on Friday. The two-week dig by an international team of researchers led by Des Moines University paleontologist Julie Meachen marked the first exploration of Natural Trap Cave at the base of the Bighorn Mountains in north-central Wyoming since its initial discovery in the 1970s. Meachen said the extensive excavation that began late last month uncovered roughly 200 large bones of animals like horses that roamed North America...

Samples from a horse leg bone more than 700,000 years old have yielded the oldest full genome known to date... The Pleistocene horse genome Orlando and colleagues pieced together helped them determine that the ancestor to the Equus lineage -- the group that gave rise to modern horses, zebras, and donkeys -- arose 4 to 4.5 million years ago, or about two million years earlier than previously thought... The team found that Przewalski's horses were an offshoot of the lineage that gave rise to domestic horses. The two groups diverged around 50,000 years ago... The six-inch (15-centimeter) horse leg bone...

The authors combine pollen, spores, sedimentary DNA, and animal remains to characterize the pre-Neolithic habitat of the site, inferring partially open woodland conditions, which would have been beneficial to large grazing herbivores like aurochs, as well as hunter-gatherer communities. This study supports previous evidence that the Stonehenge region was not covered in closed canopy forest at this time, as has previously been proposed.This study also provides date estimates for human activity at Blick Mead. Results indicate that hunter-gatherers used this site for 4,000 years up until the time of the earliest known farmers and monument-builders in the region, who would...

At some point in the past two millennia — peanuts on an evolutionary time scale — humans transformed their horses into equine speed demons. Selective breeding had a price, though, beyond $30,000 vials of pedigreed racehorse sperm. Unhelpful mutations plagued the animals. The current population of domesticated horses is about 55 million, but at some point in their history, their genetic diversity crashed. The Y chromosomes of all the world's stallions are now quite similar, suggesting that only a relatively few males were the ancestors of today's horses. Humans have not always bred so selectively, according to a study published...

...Prof. Haak will also try to detect more plague DNA in hundreds of skeletons from the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age. So far, DNA evidence from a dozen skeletons points to little variability between the strains of Yersinia pestis in such remains, suggesting that the pestilence spread rapidly across the continent. The speed may owe to another human advance at this time -- the domestication of wild horses, which may literally have carried the disease into Europe. "We see the change from wild local horses to domesticated horses, which happened rapidly at the beginning of the Bronze Age," said...

Cats like to act like they rule roost – as anyone who lives with one will tell you. And now scientists have found that it really is the cat, and certainly not the owner, who is responsible for harmony in the home. Experts at the University of Lincoln have discovered cats are the 'key player' in maintaining good karma when its sworn enemy, a dog, is brought into the household. For although they may be descended from wolves, with big, loud barks and fearsome teeth, dogs are likely to find themselves bullied mercilessly if they live with a cat.

Sometime around the invention of agriculture, the cats came crawling. It was mice and rats, probably, that attracted the wild felines. The rats came because of stores of grain, made possible by human agriculture. And so cats and humans began their millennia-long coexistence. This relationship has been good for us of course—formerly because cats caught the disease-carrying pests stealing our food and presently because cleaning up their hairballs somehow gives purpose to our modern lives. But this relationship has been great for cats as species, too. From their native home in the Middle East, the first tamed cats followed humans...

Goats Form Intense Connections with Humans, Too It's the first time a creature raised for food has evolved intense, meaningful connections with people. Photo: A goat relaxes at the Buttercups Sanctuary for Goats, United Kingdom. Credit: Christian Nawroth Goats have surprisingly just been added to the very short list of animals that are known to communicate in very direct and complex ways with humans. The other two animals, dogs and horses, are often raised as companions to humans, so the goat findings -- reported in the journal Royal Society Biology Letters -- mark the first time that an animal...