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Interesting Facts: Evolution of Horses - You Didn't Know About It
04.01.2024 23:00
Updated: 13.05.2024 21:21
The evolution of horses began in the Eocene, about 55 million years ago.
How did the first horse appear
Few people know that horses evolved over 50 million years from small forest animals the size of a small dog - Propaleothere and Hyracotherium.
They had 4 fingers instead of hooves, and small teeth were adapted to chew leaves, grass and fruits.
Outwardly, they did not even remotely resemble a modern horse.
Paleogeneticists have read the oldest genome of the domestic horse from the Americas.
They were able to sequence DNA from a tooth found in an early colonial Spanish town in Haiti.
Scientists have confirmed past findings that the first domestic horses of the New World originated from the Iberian Peninsula.
What did ancient horses look like
At the withers, stallions had a height of no more than 1m 30cm, mares were even lower.
The horse's body was covered with wool with a thick undercoat; on its legs, long hair covered the hooves.
In winter, foraging for food from under the snow and breaking the ice crust, ancient horses half-erased their hooves, as evidenced by the remains of their limbs.
Previously, we talked about jellyfish.
