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Extinct equids restored to scale. Left to right: Mesohippus, Neohipparion, Eohippus, Equus scotti and Hypohippus. Wild horses have been known since prehistory from central Asia to Europe, with domestic horses and other equids being distributed more widely in the Old World, but no horses or equids of any type were found in the New World when European explorers reached the Americas.
Equid hooves are the result of the 55-million-year evolution of the horse. The ancestral horse, Eohippus, is characterized by four toes on the hindfeet and three toes on the forefeet. [3] Wild and domesticated Equus species share a very similar hoof shape and function. The present-day conformation of the hoof is a result of a progressive ...
Artiodactyls are even-toed ungulates, species whose feet have an even number of digits; the ruminants with two digits are the most numerous, e.g. giraffe, deer, bison, cattle, goats, gazelles, pigs, and sheep. [2] The feet of perissodactyl mammals have an odd number of toes, e.g. the horse, the rhinoceros, and the tapir. [3]
Equidae (commonly known as the horse family) is the taxonomic family of horses and related animals, including the extant horses, asses, and zebras, and many other species known only from fossils. The family evolved more than 50 million years ago, in the Eocene epoch, from a small, multi-toed ungulate into larger, single-toed animals.
African wild ass foal with black chestnut on foreleg, no chestnut on hindleg Domestic horse with chestnuts on fore and hind legs. The evolution of the horse involved a reduction in the number of toes to one, along with other changes to the ancestral equid foot, and the chestnut is thought to correspond to the wrist pad of dogs and cats.
Restoration by Charles R. Knight. Mesohippus had longer legs than its predecessor Eohippus and stood about 60 cm (6 hands) tall.This equid is the first fully tridactyl horse in the evolutionary record, with the third digit being longer and larger than its second and fourth digits; Mesohippus had not developed a hoof at this point, rather it still had pads as seen in Hyracotherium and Orohippus ...
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Equus (/ ˈ ɛ k w ə s, ˈ iː k w ə s /) [3] is a genus of mammals in the family Equidae, which includes horses, asses, and zebras.Within the Equidae, Equus is the only recognized extant genus, comprising seven living species.