Evolution of the horse

The horse (Equus caballus scientific name) is a mammal of the Perissodactyla Equidae family, herbivorous, quadruped with a long and arched neck.   A female horse is called a mare, and the young are foals. The breeding and use of the horse by man is known as equine livestock or horses.   The name “horse” comes from the Latin.

Evolution

55 million years ago lived the Hyracotherium (or Eohippus), which descended from the genus Equus. The Eohippus had a size ranging between 20 and 40cm high, with four toes on the front limbs and three on the back. At first glance it was like a dog.  Its origins can be found in North America.

Many years later it would be the Spanish settlers who would reintroduce the horse in the Americas.  The Eohippus evolved from a species named after Mesohippus, which is larger and already had shaped hull shaped feet. They then evolved into Merychippus, after Pliohippus and then to equus and finally that of today, the horse.

Soon their jaws evolved into the genre called ‘Equus’, hence the name ‘horse,’ from which the whole family of horses evolved. In fact this theory is not accepted by the entire scientific community, although it is more widespread.

The evolution of the horse can be traced through the fossil record until the Hyracotherium (also called Eohippus).  This was a small herbivorous mammal that lived during the Eocene. The Hyracotherium was an animal the size of a fox, and had four toes on the front legs and three on the back, each ending in a nail. At that time they appeared in both North America and Eurasia in various species and related genera.  It appears that the Eurasian species disappeared, but the American species was there during the Oligocene.
Somewhat later it is believed that both species then colonized North America from Eurasia. Other descendants of Mesohippus were Miohippus and Merychippus.  The latter genre developed teeth with high crowns, which enabled, unlike Hyrachotherium, to graze grass, browse the leaves and shoots of trees and shrubs. Among the descendants of Merychippus was Hipparion, during the Pliocene it was moved and expanded from North America to Eurasia.  Pliohippus was the first ancestor of a single finger, Pleshippus predecessor and its successor and the modern horse, i.e., gender Equus.  The passage between North America and Eurasia was done through the Bering Strait where two continents were united.
It is believed that during the Pleistocene the genus Equus extended its range from North America to Eurasia, Africa and South America. Some time after the American horses became extinct, perhaps because of diseases.   Several were found in caves in Europe and this indicates that the horse was a very abundant animal in the stone age in that continent. There have found sufficient skeletal remains of horses in and around these caves to deduce that they were being consumed by humans.

The number of horses declined in the Neolithic Age, when Europe was covered by forests for the most part.   They found remains from the Bronze Age, and mouth parts of harnesses, which show that the horses were domesticated at this time.  Various species of extinct herbivorous mammals such as horses have been named after its resemblance to evolutionary convergence, despite not being related.