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It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature, Eohippus, into the large, single-toed animal of today.
The history of the horse family, Equidae, began during the Eocene Epoch, which lasted from about 56 million to 33.9 million years ago. During the early Eocene there appeared the first ancestral horse, a hoofed, browsing mammal designated correctly as Hyracotherium but more commonly called Eohippus, the “dawn horse.”
A Brief History of Horses. By 55 million years ago, the first members of the horse family, the dog-sized Hyracotherium, were scampering through the forests that covered North America. For more than half their history, most horses remained small, forest browsers.
The evolution of the horse, a mammal of the family Equidae, occurred over a geologic time scale of 50 million years, transforming the small, dog-sized, [1] forest-dwelling Eohippus into the modern horse. Paleozoologists have been able to piece together a more complete outline of the evolutionary lineage of the modern horse than of any other animal.
Horse, a hoofed herbivorous mammal of the family Equidae. It comprises a single species, Equus caballus, divided into numerous varieties. Between about 6,000 years ago, when it was domesticated, and the emergence of mechanized vehicles, it was used as a draft animal and as one of the chief means of transportation.
Based on modern genetic analyses, the answers to the questions surrounding horse domestication are that the horse has a diverse ancestry, that there was more than one domestication event, and that domestic horses have been widely interbred throughout the history of their domestication.
For as long as human civilization has existed, horses have been galloping alongside us. From the earliest days of domestication on the Eurasian steppe to the modern era of equestrian sports and leisure, these magnificent animals have played an utterly central role in shaping the course of history.
Horses have been intertwined with human culture since at least 2000 B.C.E. and were associated with certain human groups even earlier. “Horses are the animal that has changed history,” says...
From the humble beginnings of small, four-toed mammals to the majestic creatures we know today, the evolution of horses spans millions of years. Thanks to the field of paleontology, we have gained valuable insights into the origins and evolution of horses.
Beginning with evolution and development, The Horse tells how horses came into being more than fifty million years ago and were first domesticated more than five thousand years ago, eventually spreading across the globe.