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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.
European wild horses were hunted for up to 10% of the animal bones in a handful of Mesolithic and Neolithic settlements scattered across Spain, France, and the marshlands of northern Germany, but in many other parts of Europe, including Greece, the Balkans, the British Isles, and much of central Europe, horse bones do not occur or occur very ...
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.
At that time, land which now forms the British Isles was part of a peninsula attached to continental Europe by a low-lying area now known as "Doggerland", and land animals could migrate freely between what is now island Britain and continental Europe. The domestication of horses, and their use to pull vehicles, had begun in Britain by 2500 BC ...
Icelandic horses weigh between 330 and 380 kilograms (730 and 840 lb) [2] and stand an average of 13 and 14 hands (52 and 56 inches, 132 and 142 cm) high, although the shortest measured Icelandic horse was 113cm (11.1hh), and the tallest measured 157cm (15.3hh).
The height of horses is measured at the highest point of the withers, where the neck meets the back. [23] This point is used because it is a stable point of the anatomy, unlike the head or neck, which move up and down in relation to the body of the horse.
Historical reports are ambiguous on whether tarpans had standing manes like wild equines, or falling manes like domestic horses. [3] The appearance of European wild horses may be reconstructed with genetic, osteologic and historic data. One genetic study suggests that bay was the predominant colour in European wild horses. [14]
Przewalski's-type wild horses appear in European cave art dating as far back as 20,000 years ago, [1] but genetic investigation of a 35,870-year-old specimen from one such cave instead showed an affinity with extinct Iberian horse lineage and the modern domestic horse, suggesting that it was not Przewalski's horse being depicted in this art. [37]