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This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 4 October 2024. Horses running at a ranch in Texas Horses have been an important component of American life and culture since before the founding of the nation. In 2023, there were an estimated 6.65 million horses in the United States, with 1.5 million horse owners, 25 million citizens that participate ...
Equus simplicidens, also known as the Hagerman horse and American zebra, is an extinct species of equine native to North America during the Pliocene and Early Pleistocene. [1] It is one of the oldest and most primitive members of the genus Equus .
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.
1150–1350: Pueblo III Period in the American Southwest. [18] The most important city of the Mississippian culture of mound builders, Cahokia on the Mississippi River opposite modern Saint Louis, Missouri, reached its zenith. It was the largest city in North America in the 12th century. [19]
Areas of Cenozoic North America that were covered by seawater tended to be areas near the modern coasts. [135] The Cannonball Sea near Minot, North Dakota was the last of the North American interior. [136] Cenozoic marine invertebrates are best known from deposits near the coasts and tend to resemble modern forms.
While the horse evolved in North America, it became extinct between 8,000 and 10,000 years ago. [3] There are multiple theories for this extinction, ranging from climate change to the arrival of humans. [4] [5] [6] Horses returned to the Americas beginning with Christopher Columbus in 1493. They also arrived on the mainland with Cortés in 1519.
The true horse included prehistoric horses and the Przewalski's horse, as well as what is now the modern domestic horse, belonged to a single Holarctic species. [12] The true horse migrated from the Americas to Eurasia via Beringia, becoming broadly distributed from North America to central Europe, north and south of Pleistocene ice sheets. [12]
Modern horses were first brought to the Americas with the conquistadors, beginning with Columbus, who imported horses from Spain to the West Indies on his second voyage in 1493. [29] Horses came to the mainland with the arrival of Cortés in 1519. [30] By 1525, Cortés had imported enough horses to create a nucleus of horse-breeding in Mexico. [31]