Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
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.
The horse's evolutionary lineage became a common feature of biology textbooks, and the sequence of transitional fossils was assembled by the American Museum of Natural History into an exhibit that emphasized the gradual, "straight-line" evolution of the horse. Since then, as the number of equid fossils has increased, the actual evolutionary ...
The largest prehistoric horse was Equus giganteus of North America. It was estimated to grow to more than 1,250 kg (1.38 short tons) and 2 m (6 ft 7 in) at the shoulders. [138] The largest anchitherine equid was Hypohippus at 403 to 600 kg (888 to 1,323 lb), comparable to large modern domestic horses.
Equinae is a subfamily of the family Equidae, known from the Hemingfordian stage of the Early Miocene (16 million years ago) onwards. [1] [2] They originated in North America, before dispersing to every continent except Australia and Antarctica.
The onager (/ ˈ ɒ n ə dʒ ər /) (Equus hemionus), also known as hemione or Asiatic wild ass, is a species of the family Equidae native to Asia.A member of the subgenus Asinus, the onager was described and given its binomial name by German zoologist Peter Simon Pallas in 1775.
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 ...
Equid hybrids can be traced back to Africa where there are vast amount of equid species which resulted in natural crossing, creating hybrid species. These hybrids were found to be more efficient than the original species because they possess certain traits of both species, so scientists began to experiment by crossing other species of horse ...